Automaker General Motors announced Sept. 7 that it will hire 500 information technology employees for its new Austin IT Innovation Center, located in Northwest Austin.

The positions will be for software developers, project managers, database experts, business analysts and other IT professionals, according to a news release. Spokeswoman Juli Huston-Rough said hiring has already begun on a small scale and salaries will be competitive.

The Austin IT Innovation Center will be the first of several GM plans to open in the United States, although the company has not announced other locations. The company already employs more than 4,500 people in Texas.

GM targeted Austin for the Innovation Center because the city already has workers with skills that GM looks for.

"The next generation of IT workers, the talented visionaries we want contributing at the Innovation Center, are being trained at top computer science schools in Texas and surrounding states," said Randy Mott, GM's chief information officer, in a news release. "The IT Innovation Centers are critical to our overall IT business strategy and transformation."

He said employees at the new center will design and deliver IT that will drive down the cost of ongoing operations.

"We want IT to keep up with the imagination of our GM business partners, and to do that, we plan to rebalance the employment model over the next three years so that the majority of our IT work is done by GM employees focused on extending new capabilities that further enable our business," Mott said.

GM also is a corporate partner with the Austin-based Pecan Street sustainable living project.