Boeing Co. is adding about 1,000 engineering positions in Seal Beach and Long Beach in the next two years as part of companywide consolidation plan to boost efficiencies and meet the global demand for new aircraft production and related support.
The hires are part of an effort to centralize its commercial airline support program at the Boeing Commercial Airplanes Engineering Design Center that stretches across the two coastal cities.
“We wanted to have one place solely devoted to the customer,” said Boeing spokesman Doug Alder. “They are going to be very good paying jobs.”
Some of the positions will be moved from the Seattle area, and some will be filled by Boeing employees who stand to be affected by the upcoming closure of the C-17 program in Long Beach. There also will be some new hires, including recent college graduates, according to Alder.
“It’s much easier to retain engineering talent in Southern California that in the Seattle area,” he said.
Chicago-based Boeing is Orange County’s fourth-largest employer with about 6,800 local workers.
Last year the company added about 500 employees to the design center that had worked on out-of-production airplanes that were no longer being built but still flying in the air. The company also plans to move its operation center from Seattle to Southern California as part of the overhaul, Alder said.
The mission control center monitors and handles problems with airliner parts and systems across the country remotely or dispatches local engineering teams to work on repairs so airplanes are back in flight as quickly as possible.
The new operations in Long Beach and Seal Beach will set up shop in buildings that already are part of the company’s sprawling operations in Orange and Los Angeles counties.
Boeing forecasts that nearly 21,000 commercial aircraft and freightliners will be have to be built by 2032, representing more than $4.8 trillion in global production.
