London – 3 July 2019 – Amazon today announced that it will create 2,000 new jobs in the UK in 2019 in a move that will take its total permanent workforce to more than 29,500 by the end of the year. The roles, which are available to people with a broad range of experience, disciplines and skills, include engineers, software developers, data scientists, and cloud and machine learning experts, along with a number of entry-level positions. The breadth of the roles available reflect the range of expertise Amazon’s has in the UK and the important role employees based in the UK play in developing exciting new technologies that benefit Amazon’s customers around the world.
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond said: “Today’s announcement from Amazon is a clear vote of confidence in the British economy.
“This government is supporting business to create the high-skilled, high-paid jobs of the future, and these roles will benefit people across the UK, including the cities of Cambridge, Edinburgh, Manchester and London.
“Thanks to our record investment in infrastructure, skills and research and development, we will continue to lead the technological revolution.”
Doug Gurr, Amazon UK Country Manager, said: “We are delighted to be able continue to invest and grow our UK business. The UK is a fantastic hub for global talent and the exciting, innovative work that takes place here benefits Amazon’s customers around the world. Whether you are looking for a highly-specialised role at one of our fulfilment centres or in a field such as machine learning or flight engineering, we offer a wide variety of opportunities.”
Of the jobs created over 170 will be at its Development Centres in Cambridge, Edinburgh and London. These are highly-skilled roles working on exciting and innovative new technologies that benefit Amazon’s customers around the world.
Cambridge
In Amazon’s Cambridge Development Centre, expert teams help to build and continually improve the knowledge systems within Alexa, the cloud-based voice service used on devices including Amazon Echo, Echo Dot, Fire TV, and Fire TV Stick in the US. They also work on U.K. Amazon Web Services also has a presence in Cambridge designing and building the next generation of cloud storage.
Edinburgh
In Edinburgh (Amazon’s first Development Centre outside the U.S., established in 2004), teams of engineers, scientists, designers and product managers work on innovations that power Amazon’s capabilities in advertising technology, personalised shopping recommendations, product relationships, and global talent management. Most recently, the team has been talking at re:MARS, a new global AI event from Amazon focusing on Machine Learning, Automation, Robotics, and Space about how they have reinvented personalised shopping recommendations using deep learning technology.
London
Amazon’s London Development Centre employs software engineers and computer programmers working across our global Amazon Video service to support product development and design for ‘living room devices’, web, and mobile applications. The development centre contributes towards innovations that include ‘ASAP’, which anticipates what you want to watch next and pre-downloads the programme, and ‘X-Ray’, which allows Prime Video viewers to easily and seamlessly learn more about the video they’re watching in real time.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) also has a significant team in London, and continues to grow with new roles open for account managers, big data architects, cloud infrastructure architects, data scientists, DevOps architects and consultants, machine learning architects and specialists, operations specialists, software developers, solutions architects, and technical instructors. AWS has been continually expanding its services to support virtually any cloud workload, and it now has over 165 fully featured services for compute, storage, databases, networking, analytics, robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), mobile, security, hybrid, virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), media, and application development, deployment, and management.
In addition to the roles at the Development Centres Amazon is hiring for roles at: its head office and fashion photography studio in London; its new corporate office in Manchester; dozens of delivery stations across the country; and its growing network of fulfilment centres, which support tens of thousands of independent businesses of all sizes. Half of all units stocked in Amazon’s UK fulfilment centres are held on behalf of sellers using Fulfilment by Amazon, a service which enables sellers to store their products in Amazon's fulfillment centers so they can be quickly and easily shipped to customers around the world.
Alongside the 2,000 new permanent roles announced today, Amazon announced earlier this year plans for 1,000 new apprenticeships in the UK over the next two years. The apprenticeships will consist of nine programmes, lasting between 13 months and four years, across IT, software engineering, robotics, leadership and technology, as well as safety and human resources. Alongside these roles more than 90 new graduate and postgraduate apprentices will also become qualified over the next two years as part of the programme, through on-the-job and classroom training, focusing on software development engineering, senior leadership and automation.
Working at Amazon
Amazon was recently named #1 in LinkedIn’s ‘Top Companies’ poll. The poll is based on job applications, views and connections on its career page, and retention of new employees. Amazon was also named the Most Popular Graduate Recruiter in Retail Award at the UK TARGETjobs Graduate Awards 2018. It is the second year in a row Amazon has won the award.
In March, Amazon announced Amazon Amplify, a new programme to increase the number of women in technology and innovation roles. Amplify builds on existing diversity-focused initiatives at the company, including programmes to ensure diverse interview panels and increase volumes of women applicants, affinity groups for women, LGBT+, BAME and disabled employees, and transgender guidelines for managers and employees to support transgender staff and their allies.
In May AWS launched AWS Get IT, a new initiative is designed to introduce all Year 8 students (12-13 year olds) in the UK to cloud computing and digital skills and inspire more girls to consider a career in technology. The programme, developed together with award winning youth training organisation Future Foundations, will educate students on cloud computing technology and then invite them to create an application to solve a real-world issue faced by their school or community.
Last October, Amazon implemented in the UK highly competitive pay rates starting at £9.50/hour or £10.50/hour depending on location. Amazon also offers industry-leading benefits such as private medical insurance, life assurance, income protection, subsidised meals, an employee discount, as well as a company pension plan. Amazon also offers employees an innovative programme called Career Choice that provides funding for adult education, offering to pre-pay 95% of tuition and associated fees for nationally recognised courses, up to £8,000 over four years.
Amazon will also this year hire graduates and interns in a variety of technical, non-technical and Operations roles. Graduates and interns play a vital role at Amazon, leading teams that work on key projects and helping Amazon to provide an even better shopping experience for customers.
To explore job opportunities at Amazon, visit www.amazon.jobs
"Safe Harbor" Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: Statements in this press release regarding Amazon.co.uk Ltd's business which are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements" that involve risks and uncertainties. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, see "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report or Form 10-K for the most recently ended fiscal year.
