Google is poised to expand to a third satellite office in Bothell, the latest sign the weak economic recovery hasn't slowed the race for tech talent.

The Mountain View, Calif.-based company — which now has more than 850 employees in Kirkland and Seattle — plans to renovate a two-story building in a Bothell office park that will be able to accommodate up to 840 workers, according to city officials.

Google has beefed up its Puget Sound presence like other Silicon Valley companies to lure engineering talent from Microsoft and Amazon.com, among others. Google has said previously that 2011 will be the biggest hiring year in the company's history.

Jordan Newman, a Google spokesman, refused to answer any specific questions about the Bothell campus, but did say the company didn't intend to reduce its existing presence in Seattle or Kirkland. In a statement, the company said a group of employees from the Kirkland office had moved to "a nearby facility."

The online-search giant, which opened its first Seattle-area office in 2004, expanded its local footprint in 2006, moving into Seattle's Fremont neighborhood, and earlier this year announced it would grow further by leasing 30,000 square feet formerly occupied by Getty Images. The company also has a three-building campus in Kirkland, which opened in 2009.

The Bothell site could relieve potential crowding as Google follows through on its 2011 resolution to go on a hiring spree. Google has picked the Schnitzer North Creek Technology Campus, just east of Interstate 405.

Google won't say how many people it plans to hire there, but the building plans filed with the city of Bothell indicate a maximum occupancy of 840.

Google's expansion comes at a time when the information sector is growing about three times faster than the broader economy. Employment in the information sector across the state this summer reached its highest level on record, according to data from the state Employment Security Department.

In June, there were about 142,300 jobs in the information sector and computer-systems design, surpassing the last peak, set in August 2008, of 140,100 jobs. The vast majority of those jobs are in the Seattle metropolitan area.

Local recruiters for technology companies say they expect strong job growth through the rest of 2011, with large corporations spending money on projects put on hold during the recession.

"Every company is looking for ways to save money and create efficiencies," said Dustin Eden, the Bellevue branch manager for Robert Half Technology, a leading recruiting agency. "In one area it might be hurting some of the unskilled workforce, but it's creating massive huge demand for specialized skilled labor."

The projects run the gamut from back-end office databases to websites and mobile applications, he said. Small and medium-size companies are having a tougher time holding on to software and network engineers, amid a national shortage.

The last time the Seattle area saw the current rate of job growth in the tech sector was in 2005, Employment Security data show. After that, job growth in the sector took off, reaching a peak of more than 9 percent growth in February 2007.

After the financial crisis in late 2008, the information sector shed less than 4 percent of total jobs. By January 2010, the sector revved up hiring again.

Today there are still more job vacancies than skilled workers, and recruiters say companies are accepting candidates from community colleges who have the drive to keep learning.

The record level of tech employment may strike some as curious during the worst economic recovery in the post-World War II era.

But we live in a world where consumers and businesses prize technology for helping them improve their lives and find efficiencies, said Desiree Phair, a regional labor economist in King County for Employment Security.

It's "a world in which consumers who may be reluctant to buy some items still enjoy scooping up the latest tech gadgets," she said.

Sanjay Bhatt: 206-464-3103 or sbhatt@seattletimes.com