Amazon has announced plans to open a new development centre site in Cambridge, UK, later this year.

Aimed at enhancing the research and development activities, the building will offer jobs to 400 new employees, including knowledge engineers, data scientists, machine learning scientists, and software engineers.

To open later this year, the facility will house teams of experts who will work on devices such as Fire TV Stick, Echo, Kindle, Fire tablet, Echo Dot, the Echo Look and Alexa.

Once the new centre is open, the existing development centre at Castle Hill will be used for research and development related to Amazon’s Prime Air delivery system aimed at dispatching parcels to customers within 30min using drones.

“Amazon's increased investment in developing cutting-edge technology in Cambridge is another vote of confidence in the UK as a world-leading centre of invention and innovation."

Amazon UK manager Doug Gurr was quoted by Cambridgenetwork.co.uk as saying: “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.”

“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.”

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UK Minister of State for Digital and Culture Matt Hancock was quoted by the website as saying: “Amazon's increased investment in developing cutting-edge technology in Cambridge is another vote of confidence in the UK as a world-leading centre of invention and innovation."

This announcement comes after the US retailer announced in February its plans to appoint 5,000 full-time employees in the UK this year, which will take its total staff count in the country to 24,000 from the earlier 19,000, reported Cnbc.com. 

The company has invested £6.4bn in the UK since 2010.