Amazon plans to train thousands of veterans for work in the tech industry

Amazon is teaming with the Labor Department to launch an apprenticeship program for veterans looking to break into tech fields.

The partnership will offer former military members year-long paid internships at the e-commerce giant with the possibility of a full-time job afterwards.

The move follows Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' announcement last May that he planned to hire 25,000 veterans or spouses of military personnel over the next five years and train 10,000 more in cloud computing.

Bezos took the pledge as part of Michelle Obama and Jill Biden's Joining Forces Initiative, which aims to provide resources for military families.

“At Amazon we’re constantly looking for leaders who can invent, think big, have a bias for action, and who want to deliver for customers,” Bezos said at the time. “Those principles look very familiar to the men and women who served our country in the armed forces. And also their spouses.”

Amazon's one of 200 employers, colleges, and labor organizations to register for this type of apprenticeship program, and one of the few major tech companies involved (Tesla's one of the others).

The company launched a similar program in the United Kingdom last week, designed to hire veterans for its cloud computing division Amazon Web Services. The first class of trainees in the U.S. program will also work at AWS.