Amazon has recently revealed plans to create over 1,000 jobs in 3 major UK cities, Manchester, Edinburgh and Cambridge. At least 600 of the Manchester roles are ‘highly skilled’ and working on software, machine leaning and cloud computing.
Amazon has also confirmed plans to expand both its Development Centres in Edinburgh and Cambridge, creating capacity for an additional 250 and 180 new roles respectively.
This comes after Amazon were in the spotlight earlier this month for cutting benefits for UK warehouse staff to offset the recent pay rises. Secretary of State for International Trade, Liam Fox, said the move will provide a major boost for the UK. He said:
‘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.’
Amazon are famous for their huge warehouses across the US. One Baltimore warehouse covers one million square feet, the new Manchester office will be located across 90,000 square feet of space in the Northern Quarter.
The mega-company now has over 100 buildings in the UK with the UK head office located in Shoreditch, East London. With customer numbers rising to over 300 million, Amazon now globally employ more that 500,000 people to cope with demand. Since 2010, Amazon has invested more than £9.3 billion in the UK to build and run its new operations.
Retailers are already struggling to cope with the power Amazon have within the industry. Amazon are pushing the business forward constantly. They are always trying to come up with new ways to innovate, other retailers need to innovate with them or they will be at risk of being left behind.