Amazon cements UK commitment with hiring spree for 5,000 staff

Amazon has boosted its commitment to the UK by announcing it will create more than 5,000 new full-time jobs and launch a new apprentice programme to offer hundreds of work placements this year.

The new jobs will be across the country and include roles for software developers, engineers and technicians at its head office, at its customer service centre in Edinburgh and its new fashion photography studio in Shoreditch, east London.

The online giant said that more than 1,500 jobs will be based at its development centres in Cambridge, Edinburgh and London, where staff work on innovations including voice-recognition tool Alexa, its drone delivery service Prime Air and Prime Video, which increasingly includes original productions such as The Grand Tour.

In December Amazon revealed that it had trialled a small private drone delivery in Cambridge by delivering a TV streaming stick and a bag of popcorn to a garden, 13 minutes after the order was placed. The new jobs signal Amazon’s intentions to ramp up this programme.

“These are Silicon Valley jobs in the heart of Britain”, Doug Gurr, Amazon’s UK country manager said.

The online company said that it would look to hire as many seasonal employees for the new permanent roles as possible, adding that over 10,000 of the company’s existing 19,000 employees started in a seasonal role.

Amazon is also due to open a vast 15-storey head office in Shoreditch, near the so-called Silicon Roundabout, later this year.

Separately, Expedia has also signalled its confidence in the UK capital by signing a new deal to expand its office in Angel, north-east London, with a new lease that runs to 2030.

Expedia’s London expansion follows a series of post-Brexit investments in London from other leading US technology companies.

Since the EU referendum, Google has put forward a £1bn investment plan for new headquarters in King’s Cross, Facebook announced an additional 500 jobs for London and Apple revealed plans for new headquarters in Battersea.

Last month video messaging app Snap announced that it would open an international hub in London, setting it apart from other technology giants who have chosen lower-tax regimes for their European offices.