Amazon has announced plans to recruit thousands of new employees for technology and corporate roles, including 2,500 jobs in the UK.

In his first interview since he became chief executive of the company, Andy Jassy told Reuters that the e-commerce giant needed a larger workforce to keep up with growing demand in retail, the cloud, and advertising.

Jassy also said that the company’s plans to launch satellites into orbit to expand broadband access would also involve hiring lots more people.

The company has said that it will hire 55,000 people across the globe.

Around 40,000 of the new jobs will be based in the US, with others located in India, Germany, and Japan, as well as the UK.

The recruitment drive would represent a 20 per cent rise in the company’s technology and corporate staff, which currently number roughly 275,000 globally.

Amazon told the BBC that it had already created 10,000 jobs in the UK this year, which brings the total workforce to around 55,000.

The new roles will include engineering, research science, and robotics positions. The company said that these are largely new job titles, rather than roles that people have quit.

“There are so many jobs during the pandemic that have been displaced or have been altered, and there are so many people who are thinking about different and new jobs,” the chief exec told the news agency, citing US survey from PwC that revealed 65 per cent of workers wanted a new role.

In response to a question about whether he might change the business’ reputation for being a demanding workplace, he said: "Everybody at the company has the freedom - and really, the expectation - to critically look at how it can be better and then invent ways to make it better."

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