- Amazon has opened its new UK corporate office in Manchester, not the capital city London.
- Located inside the city's historic Hanover Building, the new office is expected to create 600 jobs.
- London still dominates the UK tech scene at large, with tech startups based in the UK capital gobbling up an estimated $9.7 billion VC dollars in 2019 - 73% of the UK's entire total.
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Amazon's latest office in the UK opened on Thursday. The company made headlines in late 2018 when it announced it had picked Manchester, not London, as the location of its new corporate office.
In a statement published Thursday, Amazon said the office will create up to 600 new corporate jobs, including software developers, solutions architects, applied scientists, brand and business development specialists, and financial analysts.
The office is based in the historic Hanover Building, in the heart of the city, and will span an estimated 90,000 square feet and six floors.
The tech giant's UK manager Doug Gurr said he was "delighted" to see Amazon open its first corporate office in the north of England, and confirmed the company is "already hiring" for jobs at the location.
"Manchester offers an incredible talent pool, a thriving hub of fast-growing UK tech start-ups and is a center of academic and intellectual excellence. We are already actively hiring from a range of skillsets," he added.
The office was first announced back in October 2018, with Manchester's mayor, Andy Burnham, describing the announcement as "another vote of confidence in our city-region as a global digital leader."
Manchester - often considered the UK's "second city" after London - is famous for its music scene, sports teams, and vibrant nightlife.
Amazon has a presence in several other UK cities like Cambridge, Edinburgh, Swansea, and Coventry, but these sites are predominately either distribution centers or research and development hubs.
Although investment in UK tech is booming, with UK tech startups raising a record £10.1 billion ($13.2 billion) in 2019, the sector remains heavily skewed toward London. In 2019, the UK's capital city gobbled up an estimated $9.7 billion of the $13.2 billion UK total.
