Amazon to create more than 2,500 jobs in the UK

Amazon said it will create several thousand new jobs in Europe in 2016, of which more than 2,500 will be in the UK. The addition will bring up the company's current workforce in the UK to more than 14,500 by the end of the year.

Amazon will be hiring for its London head office and three research and development centres in Cambridge, Edinburg and London, besides its customer service centres in Edinburg. It is also hiring for the UK datacentre region, in addition to the Amazon Web Service (AWS) datacentre regions in Frankfurt and Dublin.

The e-commerce giant said that it had created 10,000 new jobs across Europe in 2015 and currently employs more than 40,000 people across Europe. The jobs added in 2015 are the most the company has created in a single year, which is a 50% increase from 2014.

In 2016, it is investing to expand its European fulfilment centres and increase research and development, besides spending on new infrastructure to support its cloud computing business. It says it has invested more than €15bn (£11bn, $16bn) in 2010 on infrastructure and operations in Europe.

Xavier Garambois, the vice president of Amazon EU Retail said that, "We are seeing stronger demand than ever from our customers all across Europe, and we see lots more opportunity across Amazon's businesses to invent and invest for the future. We created over 10,000 new jobs in 2015 and plan to create several thousand more in 2016 at all education, experience and skill levels, from speech and linguistic scientists to digital media experts to fulfilment centre and customer service associates."

The company is hiring more scientists and software development engineers (SDEs) throughout its 12 research and development centres across Europe such as Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Spain and the UK. They will work for the website, mobile apps, digital media, devices and software such as voice recognition technology, Prime Air and cloud services.

Christopher North, Amazon UK managing director said that, "Britain has a world-class tech sector with a reputation for innovation and excellence. These new jobs we are creating up and down the country are testament to the quality of the workforce in the UK and our confidence in its economy, which we are proud to support through our continued investments."