Amid reports of Microsoft soon opening its first retail store in the UK, it appears that the company has recently opened a new office in Silverdale, a small city 26 miles west of its Redmond headquarters, on the Kitsap Peninsula. According to a report from the Puget Sound Business Journal (paywalled), the Redmond giant opened the new office on the other side of the Puget Sound to hire Nathan Evans, a former Chief Technology officer at Applied Technical Systems that now works as Principal Software Architect at Microsoft (via Geekwire).
This is quite unusual for the company to open a 20-person office for a new employee, to say the least, but Evans has some reasons for not wanting to do the daily commute trip to Redmond. Indeed, the Business Journal reports that the Software Architect is a member of the Kitsap Economic Development Alliance’s Board of Directors, something that could give Microsoft new opportunities to develop its presence in the peninsula.
Speaking with The Tacoma News Tribute, Kitsap County Commissioner Ed Wolfe explained that Silverdale is a “high-tech community,” with several small tech firms being present in the area. A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed the opening of the new office in Silverdale, but declined to share more details about the company’s motives.
