“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,” says Amazon’s Doug Gurr, “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.”

The new R&D centre is next to Cambridge station. When it opens, Amazon’s current R&D centre in Castle Hill, Cambridge will switch to developing Prime Air services – Amazon’s drone delivery service.

Researchers in the new building will be working on mathematical modelling, speech science, machine learning and knowledge engineering.

Amazon plans to have 24,000 employees in the UK by the end of this year with 5,000 of those added during this year.

By the end of the year Amazon plans to have 15 UK delivery warehouses. Three of them – Doncaster, Warrington and Tilbury – are due to open in the autumn.