Amazon has opened the doors to its new UK head office in central London. It will take all 15 storeys amounting to 600,000 sq. ft. of the Principal Place building in Shoreditch. By the end of the year, Amazon will have over 5,000 corporate and research and development roles in London across three offices in Shoreditch, Holborn and Barbican supporting its retail, digital entertainment, devices and AWS businesses.
At the head office opening, Amazon announced increased community investment plans to help children and young people reach their full potential in the digital world including funding one million schoolchildren’s healthy breakfasts in the 2017/2018 school year through the charity Magic Breakfast and doubling the size of its Amazon Women in Innovation Bursary programme.
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.”
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.”
The opening of Principal Place is part of Amazon’s significant investment in the UK, totalling more than £6.4 billion in building and running its operations since 2010. This year Amazon has pledged to create 5,000 new permanent roles across the country, bringing its total workforce to 24,000 across its head office, three development centres as well as its fulfilment and customer service centres.
“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,” said Doug Gurr, UK Country Manager, Amazon.
Doubling R&D in the capital to benefit Prime Video customers globally
Amazon’s London Development Centre, which primarily focuses on research and development (R&D) for Amazon’s global Prime Video service, will have three dedicated floors in the new building, with capacity increasing from the current 450 roles to 900. The new development centre will house teams of software development engineers, user-interface experts, data analysts and graphic designers working to build new technologies for Amazon’s Prime Video service.
The London R&D teams have already helped develop innovative features such as X-Ray, which allows you to go behind the scenes of your favourite films and TV shows with instant access to cast photos, bios, filmographies, soundtrack info, trivia and in-depth character information via IMDb; including for UK-filmed series like The Grand Tour, Outlander and Ripper Street.
Teams have also developed and launched the capability for add-on channel subscriptions, allowing UK customers to subscribe to channels, such as Eurosport and Discovery, through the Amazon Video service; as well as the mobile downloads feature, which enables customers to download shows and films for offline viewing when they are on-the-go.
“There is a thriving creative community here in London, many of whom we already work with on Amazon Original and exclusive TV shows like The Grand Tour and the forthcoming Good
Omens,” said Jay Marine, Vice President, Amazon Video Europe. “We also have hundreds of dedicated software engineers right here in London working hard every day to deliver a fantastic video experience to our Prime members, wherever they’re watching on whatever device they are using.”
The expansion of Amazon’s London Development Centre complements growing teams in development centres in Cambridge and Edinburgh which focus on innovations including voice recognition, drones and further improving Amazon’s online and mobile shopping experience. By the end of the year Amazon will have over 1,500 UK based employees in high tech roles working on services that are rolled out to Amazon customers globally.
Share