Online powerhouse Amazon is stepping up its European cloud presence with the creation of a development centre in Germany. The new entity, based in Berlin and Dresden, will create 70 new engineering jobs and will focus on developing technologies to support the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud computing business, including hypervisors, operating systems, management tools and other applications as well as the development of machine learning technologies for use across all of Amazon’s platforms.

The cloud services pioneer will build its development centre out over the next 12 months and will use the operation as a jumping off point to help European businesses move to the cloud.

Amazon already has support for German companies in the form of account managers, solutions architects and technical support engineers. The development centre will add software development engineers who help create the building blocks of the cloud.

“We have always known that there is a wealth of technology talent across Germany and are looking for the most creative minds in the country to work on the next generation of technology behind our fast growing cloud computing business. Locating the development of key parts of the Amazon Web Services cloud in Germany speaks to the broad set of talent here and the investment we are making in the country,” said Ralf Herbrich managing co-director, Amazon Development Center Germany.