Apple has a secret in Washington County.



The Silicon Valley company has hired close to two-dozen people in a hardware engineering lab there, raiding Intel and other Oregon tech employers for a variety of roles, according to job postings, social media profiles and an individual familiar with Apple's recruiting efforts.



Apple didn't respond to a request for comment - the company is notoriously secretive about its research activities - so it's unclear how many people it plans to hire for the Oregon facility, what products they're working on, or the office's exact location.



A person familiar with Apple's hiring says the lab is in Washington County near the border between Beaverton and Hillsboro. That's closer to the core of Oregon's hardware ecosystem than the software and web services companies clustered in downtown Portland.

Apple's Oregon job postings seek design verification expertise, a specialty for ensuring a finished product meets the original specifications.



LinkedIn profiles indicate Apple has been hiring for its Washington County site since November and that a number of its new employees previously held senior research or engineering roles at Intel.



Apple is among several large tech companies with substantial outposts in Oregon, capitalizing on the region's concentration of high-tech skills and a less-competitive hiring market. Others include eBay, Amazon, Google, Salesforce and, of course, Intel, which has its biggest site in Washington County.



Apple isn't new to the region. It has had a software development team in Vancouver since the early 1990s and operates a massive campus of data centers in Prineville.

Additionally, Apple's Advanced Computation Group has a small, previously undisclosed office in a converted firehouse in Southeast Portland. An employee at the site confirmed its location Wednesday but declined to discuss operations. Another person familiar with the Southeast Portland site said Apple has been there for close to a decade.

Apple's new Washington County site does not appear to have the makings of a major new Apple campus. The company has been scouting potential locations for several months for a significant expansion far from its Silicon Valley headquarters.



Oregon economic development officials have said there has been no indication Apple is considering putting that large campus here, and recent reports indicate the company is focused on Northern Virginia and North Carolina.

Correction: The original version of this article conflated Apple's previously undisclosed ACG operation in Southeast Portland and the new validation lab in Washington County.



-- Mike Rogoway | twitter: @rogoway | 503-294-7699