Today we opened the doors to our new 15 storey 600,000 sq. ft. UK head office in Shoreditch, London. A mixed-use development with half an acre of public piazza and events space, 20,000 sq. ft. will be dedicated to retail, including cafés and restaurants offering alfresco dining.
London is open to talent, innovation and entrepreneurship and the natural place for major global companies to call home – and it’s great news that Amazon has put its confidence in our unique blend of talent, creativity and access to finance.
Our new head office is part of Amazon’s long-term commitment to the UK, having invested £6.4 billion here since 2010 and, this year, pledging to create 5,000 new jobs in the UK to reach 24,000 permanent employees across the country.
The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, said: "London is open to talent, innovation and entrepreneurship and the natural place for major global companies to call home – and it’s great news that Amazon has put its confidence in our unique blend of talent, creativity and access to finance. This is the latest in a long line of recent major investments in London by global tech firms over the last year, and shows once more that our great city is the tech capital of Europe."
Doubling our high tech research and development roles in London
London is one of the world’s truly great cities and home to some of the most talented, creative people on the planet, and we are delighted to provide our teams of innovators with a new, purpose-built workplace
The new head office will also be home to our London Development Centre, which primarily focuses on research and development for Amazon’s global Prime Video service.
We now have capacity to double the number of research & development roles from 450 to 900 in London, dedicating three floors in the new building for teams that includes software development engineers, user-interface experts, data analysts and graphic designers – all working to build new technologies for Amazon’s Prime Video service, benefitting tens of millions of customers around the world.
Minister for Digital Matt Hancock said: "This is great news for Britain - Amazon's increased investment in developing cutting-edge technology in London is another vote of confidence in the UK as a world-leading centre of creativity and innovation."
To mark the opening of our new head office, we also announced today that we’ll boost our work to help children and young people reach their potential in the digital world by funding a million school children’s healthy breakfasts in the upcoming school year through Magic Breakfast, and doubling the intake of female tech students through our Amazon Women in Innovation Bursary. Over 5,000 schoolchildren in 77 schools are set to benefit in the 2017/2018 school year, whilst over time we’ll see up to 24 students being funded through the bursary.
"London is one of the world’s truly great cities and home to some of the most talented, creative people on the planet, and we are delighted to provide our teams of innovators with a new, purpose-built workplace,” added Doug Gurr, UK Country Manager, Amazon. “While we open a new development centre to house today’s innovators, we also want to help foster the next generation of inventors by funding a million healthy breakfasts to give schoolchildren the fuel to learn, and expand our bursary programme to help more women get university educations for high tech roles."
