General Motors (GM) will hire approximately 1,000 high-tech workers to staff a new Information Technology Innovation Center near Atlanta. The automaker’s new staff will be software developers, project managers, database experts, business analysts and other IT professionals for the third of four centers in the US.

"Locating this center in Atlanta makes good business sense,” GM CIO Randy Mott. “We can draw from a deep pool of high-tech expertise through the surrounding colleges, universities and talent residing in the area."

GM has hired more than 700 IT specialists to work at the Innovation Centers in Austin, Texas, and Warren, Michigan. Response in the market has been strong, as three of four candidates offered jobs to date have accepted them.

The Atlanta Innovation Center will be located in Roswell, a northern suburb of Atlanta.

“This Innovation Center is exactly the kind of employer we want in the state,” Georgia Governor Nathan Deal said. “The information age will be with us for a long time, and attracting companies such as GM that are on the cutting edge of manufacturing and technology is a huge win for Georgia.”

Mott is leading a rebalancing of IT at GM, under which the majority of IT work will be done by GM employees instead of being outsourced, which has been the GM model for most of the last three decades.

“We look to the Innovation Centers to design and deliver IT that drives down the cost of ongoing operations while continuously increasing the level and speed at which innovative products and services are available to GM customers,” Mott said. “The IT Innovation Centers are critical to our overall GM business strategy and IT transformation.”

The location of the fourth site will be announced at a later date.