Amazon seeks 600 skilled workers for Manchester office

Amazon has opened a new corporate office in Manchester, and is now looking for more than 600 people to fill roles there.

The jobs on offer are at both Amazon and Amazon Web Services (AWS) and include software development engineers, solutions architects, applied scientists and business development specialists.

Doug Gurr, UK country manager at Amazon, said: “I am delighted we’re opening our first corporate office in the north of England. Manchester offers an incredible talent pool, a thriving hub of fast-growing UK tech startups and is a centre of academic and intellectual excellence. We are already actively hiring from a range of skillsets for our new Manchester office, so if you’ve always wanted to build the future, come build it with us.”

The new recruits will bring the number of Amazon jobs across the UK’s Northwest to more than 6,000 across its new corporate office and three existing fulfilment centres.

As well as opening the Manchester office, Amazon announced the launch of its Amazon Future Engineer bursary for students at Manchester University.

The bursary, aimed at students from poorer socio-economic backgrounds, will give £3,500 a year to selected computer science students at the university to help support them while studying.

Robert Stephens, head of computer science at the University of Manchester, said: “The university is delighted to be part of the Amazon Future Engineer programme and welcomes the support Amazon is providing to fund two undergraduate students studying computer science. We hope that this initiative, together with a number of other outreach programmes that the university delivers, will help inspire and enable more students to study computer science and pursue tech careers.”

Amazon’s Manchester office will also have opportunities for graduates throughout 2020, including retail and business development graduate roles, which will give people fresh from university the opportunity to work across different parts of Amazon’s business.

The start of this year also saw the graduation of the first cohort of students from the firm’s Manchester AWS re/Start training and job placement programme.

AWS re/Start offers people with no experience in technology the opportunity to acquire skills in digital subjects such as software development and cloud computing, as part of a 12-week course.

The initiative is designed to help people build both soft and technical skills through collaboration between different organisations, aiming for participants to eventually be able to start a career in cloud computing.

Originally launched in the UK, the AWS re/Start programme now has cohorts in the US, France and the Netherlands.

The first Manchester cohort will take up roles in UK organisations such as as FibreNation and Isosec, as well as local startups. The next cohort, applications for which are already open, will start in February 2020.

Amazon runs several initiatives to try to increase the availability of people with cloud skills in the UK jobs market, including its partnership with the Career Colleges Trust to create a pre-university qualification in cloud computing and its Get IT programme, which aims to encourage more girls to pursue a tech career.

AWS will also launch a startup garage in Manchester to help local small businesses to develop.

In 2018, the online retail giant opened a new research and development centre in Manchester and expanded other offices to house 1,000 new skilled staff.