Amazon hires another 2,500 staff in the UK

AMAZON is boosting its UK workforce with plans to add 2,500 permanent jobs by the end of the year.

The online retail giant said the jobs would be across all levels of experience and include software developers, engineers, technicians and those seeking entry level positions and on-the-job training.

It will bring the total number of staff in the UK to 27,500 by the end of 2018, with Amazon having invested more than £9.3bn since 2010.

Amazon UK’s country manager Doug Gurr refused to say how many jobs will be in warehouses, though it confirmed 16 warehouses would recruit.

Around 650 roles would be created across its development centres and cloud computing division Amazon Web Services. Its head office in London is also set to hire hundreds of staff.

Mr Gurr said: ‘ The UK is a fantastic place to do business so we are delighted to continue our investment in the British economy.

‘Whether you are looking for an entry-level role or in highly-specialised fields such as speech science or machine learning, we are proud to be expanding our UK workforce so we can further improve our products and services.’

The 2,500 jobs mark a slowdown from the 5,000 jobs Amazon added last year, but Mr Gurr said: ‘That honestly is simply a reflection of where calendar years happen to fall.’ The news comes days after the GMB union accused it of ‘terrible conditions and poor treatment of workers’.

It cited a series of Freedom of Information requests showing ambulances had been called out 600 times ‘over the last three financial years, and that in more than half of those cases the patients were taken to hospital’.

Yesterday, Gurr responded: ‘We’re very proud of the working conditions across all parts of our business.’