Ocado has announced plans to create 100 new advanced technology jobs in the UK as part of an expansion of its Swiftfields Campus development centre in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire.
The grocery e-tailer is seeking to recruit software engineers, product managers, designers, technicians, and testers working on advanced technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, digital twins, and autonomous vehicles.
The new employees will be part of Ocado’s second-largest UK development centre, the Swiftfields Campus, which already employs 385 software and hardware specialists working in areas such as machine learning, automation, big data, cloud computing, and IoT.
Following the company’s investment in robotic picking and autonomous vehicles, Ocado has taken on three new units in the area to expand its testing, experimentation, and collaborative office facilities. The expanded Swiftfields Campus is set to support the company’s accelerated adoption of the Ocado Smart Platform (OSP) - the end-to-end e-commerce, fulfilment, and logistics platform used for online grocery shopping by retailers across the globe.
Commenting on the announcement, Ocado head of UK Development Centres Isabel Richards said that the company is “always on the lookout for people who share our drive to innovate”.
“Our ‘Swiftfields’ Campus gives us access to both the amazing technical talent in Hertfordshire and the industrial space that enable us to build world-class development facilities and experiment at speed,” she added. “This new hub in Welwyn Garden City offers exciting opportunities for ambitious, tech-savvy individuals who want to play a part in developing pioneering innovations that are changing the way the world shops.”
Ocado currently employs around 2,500 technical experts in seven countries across the world. Welwyn Garden City is among Ocado’s 12 development centres, which are also based in London and Hatfield (UK), Sofia (Bulgaria), Wroclaw and Krakow (Poland), Barcelona (Spain), Stockholm (Sweden), Toronto (Canada), San Francisco, and Las Vegas (USA).
Last year, following a £1 billion investment round, the company created 500 new technology jobs, with the majority of the new roles being software engineers and product managers located around European development centres. However, a "significant" number of these roles also included positions at Ocado’s London site, which announced 260 new jobs in July 2019.
