Google added more than 1,300 employees to its UK headcount in 2022 in signs it was ramping up its workforce ahead of a move into its mega new Kings Cross headquarters next year.
The tech giant’s UK headcount increased 23% in 2022 to just over 7,000, including around 400 new roles in sales and marketing and over 600 new R&D jobs.
Turnover for the year rose slightly on a pro-rata basis to £2.6 billion, but profits fell by more than half to £283 million.
In January, Google’s US parent said it had eliminated 12,000 roles, or around 6% of its global workforce, and slowed its rate of hiring in a bid to cut costs as it dealt with a slump in the digital advertising market.
But in its UK accounts, Google said the “financial impact of the reduction in workforce…will not be material,” in signs the brunt of the job cuts were borne in the US.
Google new giant UK headquarters in Kings Cross – dubbed a ‘landscraper’ because it is as long as the Shard is tall – will be able to accommodate some 4,000 employees when construction on the project finishes next year.
The building – the first Google has designed from scratch outside the US – will feature a 25-metre swimming pool and a multi-use games area for basketball and tennis.
Google paid £290 million for a 999-year lease for the site in 2013. Last year the company also spent £805 million buying up the Central St Giles office near Oxford Street from which it had been renting office space – meaning that it has enough space to accommodate 10,000 employees in the UK.
Google DeepMind research unit, also based in Kings Cross, is set to be a major area of focus for the company as it seeks to gain an edge in the global AI race. In April the firm merged UK-based DeepMind with its Google Brain AI unit, leaving Demis Hassabis, the British head of DeepMind, in charge of the combined group.
