Amazon to open machine learning R&D hub in Barcelona

Amazon has announced plans for a new machine learning-focused research and development (R&D) hub in Barcelona and expects to hire more than 100 engineers and scientists when it opens in early 2018. Located in the urban renewal startup area known as 22@, the R&D center will be housed in the very same building as the company's recently announced Amazon Seller Support Hub, which is scheduled to open around the same time and which will help small online companies from Southern Europe sell on Amazon Marketplace. "We want to work closely with Spain's scientific community and universities to advance state of the art research in machine learning," noted Ralf Herbrich, Amazon's director of machine learning. Amazon has been on something of a hiring spree of late, having recently revealed plans to increase its headcount by 55 percent to 280,000 in the U.S. alone over 18 months. Just yesterday, the company announced that its first fulfillment center in New York state will be landing in Staten Island, while a few months ago Amazon posted 50,000 warehouse jobs in the U.S. Over in Europe, the company has been hiring across multiple disciplines, including machine learning.