Deliveroo wants to hire 300 more UK tech workers to help it take on UberEats and Amazon

London food delivery startup Deliveroo said on Wednesday that it is planning to hire 300 tech workers in the UK.

The company, which allows people to order food from over 20,000 restaurants that don't typically deliver via an app, said its worldwide sales grew 650% in 2016, despite increasing competition from US heavyweights like Uber and Amazon.

Founded in 2012 by former Morgan Stanley investment banking analyst Will Shu and software developer Greg Orlowski, Deliveroo now employs over 1,000 full-time staff worldwide (excluding couriers). Of those jobs, roughly 125 are tech roles.

The new tech roles - to be based out of Deliveroo's new headquarters on Cannon Street, London - will include many "highly-skilled" and "experienced" jobs, according to Deliveroo. Interestingly, the app-based company said it is looking to hire both software and hardware engineers.

The new roles will include software engineers, research scientists, product managers, user researchers, designers and data analysts, Deliveroo said.

Will Shu, founder and CEO of Deliveroo, said in a statement: "Deliveroo is going from strength to strength and growing every single day. London is where I founded this company and it's from our headquarters here that we export our British-born technology around the world.

"That's why we're now on the lookout for over 300 people to join our engineering team. To any young engineer wanting to be part of Britain's most exciting technology company, I'd say now's the time to join Deliveroo.

"When so many of the success stories in the on-demand economy have been grown from America, I am particularly proud to be doing this here in Britain."

In the UK, for every transaction, Deliveroo charges the customer a £2.50 delivery charge and takes a commission fee from the restaurant. Restaurants like PizzaExpress, Dishoom, and Gourmet Burger Kitchen have all signed up to the platform, as has Michelin-starred restaurant Trishna.

The company has expanded to 130 cities across 12 countries with the help of $475 million (£386 million) in funding from venture capital funds like Accel Partners, which backed the likes of Facebook and Dropbox in their early days.

But Deliveroo's rapid expansion hasn't come cheap. Documents filed with Companies House show that Deliveroo lost £18.1 million in 2015, up from £1.4 million in 2014.