This article is more than 1 year old

Amazon erects 'digital hub' near Silicon Roundabout

Mega media centre draws staffers from Pushbutton, LoveFilm

Amazon is opening a new eight-storey office in London just west of Shoreditch's Silicon Roundabout to house design teams, software devs and engineers from its July 2011 acquisition Pushbutton and its video-on-demand subsidiary LoveFilm.

Staffers at the new centre will work on developing platforms and APIs for "the next generation of TV and film services" on tablets, smartphones and smart TVs.

Pulling in design and development staff from the two London-based Amazon companies, the 47,000ft2 centre is situated in the Glasshouse Yard, near London's Barbican.

Paula Byrne – CEO of user-interface design and development company Pushbutton – will become managing director of the new centre. “London is a hotbed of tech talent and testament to that fact is Amazon choosing the capital as the location for the new global Digital Media Development Centre,” said Byrne.

Innovation is part of the Amazon DNA and we are creating a British centre of excellence to design and develop the next generation of TV and film services for a wide range of digital devices.

The work will focus on developing platforms and "interactive TV experience for TVs, game consoles, smartphones and PCs", including the "digital media experience" on Amazon websites, as well back-end services that power those interfaces.

The company wouldn't say how many staff will work in the 47,000ft2 Glasshouse office. But there could well be new jobs going.

It doesn't look like the parent is hiring - the only advert on Amazon's London jobs site is for a corporate lawyer. Amazon's UK headquarters remain in Slough.

But the subsidiaries are: Pushbutton is advertising for several positions, including HTML5 devs, video codec developers, Quality Assurance engineers and PS3 software developers. And LoveFilm has over 20 jobs listed on its website. There's no guarantee these jobs will be in the Silicon Roundabout office, though, so you might not get to share a latte with Bong... ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like