The new Amazon Cambridge Development Centre at One the Square opens tomorrow to signal another stunning uptick in the technology innovation credibility of the cluster.
The 60,000 sq ft Amazon hub has space for 400 new highly skilled roles in the city including machine learning scientists, knowledge engineers, data scientists, mathematical modellers, speech scientists and software engineers.
The company describes the move as “a significant boost to Amazon’s research and development capabilities in the UK.”
Guests at the opening will learn more about Amazon’s investments in the UK, hearing about how research conducted and technology developed in Cambridge – such as advanced machine learning and Alexa, Amazon’s voice recognition software – is benefiting hundreds of millions of Amazon customers around the world.
Doug Gurr, Amazon UK Country Manager, will be on hand to expand on the company’s plans for the new centre.
Amazon has invested £6.4 billion in the UK since 2010 and by the end of this year will have 24,000 permanent employees in the country. Additionally, 74,000 people are employed by UK-based Marketplace sellers as a result of their business on Amazon.
Teams of experts working on devices such as Kindle, Fire tablet, Fire TV Stick, Echo, Echo Dot and the new Echo Look, as well as Alexa, will move to the new larger site this autumn. Amazon is currently recruiting extensively in Cambridge as part of its expansion plans in the city.
With the new site open, the current development centre building at Castle Hill will be used primarily for R & D for Prime Air, a delivery system from Amazon designed to safely get parcels to customers in 30 minutes or less using unmanned aerial vehicles, also called drones.
“We are constantly inventing on behalf of our customers, and our development centres in Cambridge, Edinburgh and London play a major role in Amazon’s global innovation story,” said Gurr.
“By the end of this year, we will have more than 1,500 innovation related roles here in Britain, working on everything from machine learning and drone technology to streaming video technology and Amazon Web Services.”
The companyannounced earlier this year an apprenticeship programme offering hundreds of opportunities in engineering, logistics and warehousing roles in fulfilment centres across the country, as well as Amazon Web Services re:Start, a free training and job placement programme for the UK to educate 1,000 young adults as well as military veterans, reservists, and their spouses, on the latest software development and cloud computing technologies.
• PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS: A computer generated image of One The Square – home to Amazon’s Research & Development operation in Cambridge