Amazon to open new development centre in Cambridge
Amazon has announced that it will be opening a new Development Centre site in Cambridge this autumn. The new 60,000 sq. ft. Amazon Development Centre building, located close to the train station in Cambridge’s CB1 business district, will have space for over 400 employees including machine learning scientists, knowledge engineers, data scientists, mathematical modellers, speech scientists and software engineers.
The UK Minister of State for Digital and Culture Matt Hancock said: “This is fantastic news – Amazon’s increased investment in developing cutting-edge technology in Cambridge is another vote of confidence in the UK as a world-leading centre of invention and innovation.”
Once the new site opens, the current Development Centre building at Castle Hill will be used primarily for research and development for Prime Air – Amazon’s system for delivering parcels by drone.
“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 Doug Gurr, UK Country Manager, Amazon. “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.”
In its statement announcing the new Development Centre, Amazon said that it has invested £6.4bn across the UK since 2010, and this year has pledged to create 5,000 new permanent roles across the country, bringing its full time workforce to 24,000.
