Amazon to create 2,500 jobs in the UK

Tech giant to boost workforce by 20 per cent as it looks to fill tech and corporate roles

Amazon is to begin a major hiring spree with plans to appoint 55,000 new staff to technology and corporate roles globally, the company's new CEO Andy Jassy told Reuters.

Jassy, who took over from Jeff Bezos in July, highlighted the growth of cloud and Project Kuiper, the firm's initiative to launch satellites into space to improve broadband access, as two areas which would need more staff.

The bulk of the positions will be in the US, where the firm plans to create 40,000 roles, while about 2,500 will be created in the UK, according to the Guardian.

It also reports that Amazon will hire the new UK staff for its offices in London and Manchester, as well as its "tech hubs" in Cambridge and Edinburgh.

The tech giant's latest batch of new hires would represent a 20 per cent increase in Amazon's tech and corporate staff, who currently number around 275,000 globally, the company said.

It had previously planned to fully reopen its offices in October for corporate and tech employees, but has now pushed that back to 2022 in response to the spread of COVID-19.

Jassy was also asked about plans to change Amazon's workplace culture, telling Reuters that "everybody at the company has the freedom - and really, the expectation - to critically look at how it can be better and then invent ways to make it better."