Amazon’s office at 60 Holborn Viaduct is new UK corporate headquarters
Amazon continues recruitment for tech talent in hundreds of new roles including Amazon Instant Video’s global platform at Leadenhall Court
London – 15 June 2015: Amazon has marked the start of London Technology Week by announcing that its move to London is now complete. More than 2,000 employees – the majority of whom were previously based in Slough – have taken up residency in three locations across the capital. The three offices are 60 Holborn Viaduct which is the new Amazon UK corporate headquarters, Glasshouse Yard near the Barbican and Leadenhall Court.
Amazon expects to hire hundreds of new employees across the three London sites in 2015 alone, having already recruited more than 1,000 corporate employees in new positions in the last three years.
“London is now officially our new home,” said Christopher North, Managing Director at Amazon UK. “The move to the capital was vitally important to our continued growth in the UK and to finding the very best talent who will join our existing team that works day in, day out to provide an exceptional service for our customers all over the country, Europe and the world.”
The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson MP said: “With our unrivalled mix of investors, talent and creativity it is hardly surprising that tech businesses such as Amazon are clamouring to be part of the incredible London tech story. This sector has flourished beyond recognition in the last five years, creating thousands of jobs and outpacing the rest of the economy.”
Amazon’s London-based technology development centre, with hundreds of technology engineers responsible for developing the company’s global Amazon Instant Video services, is based in its new home at Leadenhall Court. The team also includes significant technology resources to support Amazon’s platform, mobile applications, product development and design teams. Amazon’s growing video business is recruiting for tech talent, with more than 50 open positions currently available.
Amazon is also working with UK universities and business schools to increase and expand an established internship offering, which supports growing MBA and Graduate Programmes. More than 20 interns received placements every year for the past three years with the Amazon Instant Video development teams to work on defined software development projects with experienced mentors. Historically, more than 70% of the 2014 interns have so far received an offer of a permanent Software Engineer job at the end of their placement. These opportunities are in addition to more than 80 graduates Amazon hires annually in the UK across all disciplines and organisations. A three year Rotation Program for MBAs also benefits from local internship talent with Amazon the largest overall recruiter of MBA interns from London Business School, and Imperial College London the largest provider of graduates.
The move to the three office locations in London is just the start. In 2017, Amazon will open a new building at Principal Place in Shoreditch which will provide enough total capacity to house 5,000 employees.
Located on Norton Folgate, between Liverpool Street and Shoreditch High Street stations, Principal Place is a mixed-use development with a 600,000 sq ft, 15 storey office building and an adjacent residential tower. Construction has commenced and Amazon will take residence in 431,000 sq ft of office space in 2017.
“We now have in excess of 2,000 permanent employees based in London in addition to the thousands of permanent employees in our UK fulfilment and customer service centres across the UK,” said Christopher North. “We’re enabling tens of thousands of UK businesses to sell their products worldwide through Amazon Marketplace, powering British entrepreneurs and business start-ups through Amazon Web Services, and we have invested well over £1 billion in our UK infrastructure. The building of our new office in Shoreditch is a further illustration of the important role that London and the UK will play in our global operations.”
In addition to its corporate offices, Amazon will also open a 46,000 sq ft fashion photography studio in Shoreditch this summer. The studio will be one of the largest of its kind in Europe and produce hundreds of thousands of on and off model images every year.
Amazon now has over 8,000 permanent employees in the UK and expects to hire thousands more in the coming years.
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Notes to Editors
About London Technology Week
London Technology Week is a week of face-to-face events celebrating London’s global position as a hotbed of tech innovation, business successes, entrepreneurship and creative talent. In 2014, more than 40,000 people from over 40 countries came together for 203 events held at venues across the capital. Events ranged from large international conferences to intimate workshops, face-to-face investor meetings, pitching competitions and hackathons, covering a huge variety of topics including gaming, big data, IT, wearables, education, music, sport, fashion, finance and science.
For London Technology Week 2015, Amazon Web Services will be hosting an afternoon event dedicated to all things Startup at the new Amazon UK headquarters, 60 Holborn Viaduct. Participants will hear from AWS experts who have been working with many startups and EMEA’s leading VC’s on how to prepare the perfect pitch, scale your platform and maintain your startup culture. Find more information on the event and how to attend here.
About Amazon
Amazon.com opened on the World Wide Web in July 1995. The company is guided by four principles: customer obsession rather than competitor focus, passion for invention, commitment to operational excellence, and long-term thinking. Customer reviews, 1-Click shopping, personalized recommendations, Prime, Fulfilment by Amazon, AWS, Kindle Direct Publishing, Kindle, Fire phone, Fire tablets, and Fire TV are some of the products and services pioneered by Amazon.