Amazon to create 1,000 technology jobs in three UK cities
Amazon has unveiled plans to open a new corporate office in Manchester next year. It will also increase the capacity of its Edinburgh and Cambridge development centres.
The move will create capacity for over 1,000 new roles in the UK.
Doug Gurr, UK country manager at Amazon, said: “With the UK taking a leading role in our global innovation, we are delighted to announce plans to create capacity for over 1,000 new highly-skilled roles across the country. These are Silicon Valley jobs in Britain, and further cement our long-term commitment to the UK.”
The new Manchester office will be housed in the city’s Hanover Building in the Northern Quarter. The six-storey, 90,000 square foot site will give Amazon capacity to create at least 600 new roles in the fields of software development, machine learning and R&D.
Meanwhile, the expanded Edinburgh development centre will provide capacity for more than 250 new positions. The new recruits will join hundreds of software engineers, machine learning scientists and user experience designers already working at the centre. Teams in Edinburgh work on new advertising technology and personalised shopping recommendations.
Amazon’s Cambridge development centre will also be benefiting from new investment to enable it to create an additional 180 roles. The site is home to the R&D teams that develop new innovations for Amazon devices, Amazon Alexa, the Prime Air drone delivery system that is currently in development, and core machine learning and retail systems.
Secretary of State for International Trade Liam Fox said: “Ensuring that the world’s best and brightest companies continue to invest and innovate in the UK is at the heart of our Global Britain agenda. Amazon’s decision to create hundreds of highly-skilled jobs in Manchester, Edinburgh and Cambridge is an enormous vote of confidence in the UK and a signal to the world that the UK is very much open for business.”
