Amazon has boosted its commitment to the UK by announcing it will create more than 5,000 new full-time jobs and launch a new apprentice programme to offer hundreds of work placements this year.

The new jobs will be across the country and include roles for software developers, engineers and technicians at its head office, at its customer service centre in Edinburgh and its new fashion photography studio in Shoreditch, east London.

The online giant said that more than 1,500 jobs will be based at its development centres in Cambridge, Edinburgh and London, where staff work on innovations including voice-recognition tool Alexa, its drone delivery service Prime Air and Prime Video, which increasingly includes original productions such as The Grand Tour.

In December Amazon revealed that it had trialled a small private drone delivery in Cambridge by delivering a TV streaming stick and a bag of popcorn to a garden, 13 minutes after the order was placed. The new jobs signal Amazon’s intentions to ramp up this programme.

“These are Silicon Valley jobs in the heart of Britain”, Doug Gurr, Amazon’s UK country manager said.