Amazon: Forged in Yorkshire – a leadership journey rooted in steel
Amazon’s Yorkshire ‘Man of Steel’ David Benfell is to lead the company’s latest fulfilment centre to open in Hull - bringing 2,000 new jobs to the region.
Barnsley Born and raised, he has spent nearly two decades working in the steel industry – experience that has shaped his leadership style and prepared him for one of Amazon’s biggest new ventures.
Amazon cutting-edge fulfilment centre is part of a colossal £40bn UK investment.
APPLY NOW: Recruitment for Amazon’s Hull fulfilment centre has gone live. To find out more and apply, visit www.jobsatamazon.co.uk.
The building, jobs and technology may be new, but the opening of the Hull fulfilment centre will have a traditional Yorkshire feel.
David, the man at the helm of the new Hull fulfilment centre, here tells us how his personal and professional connections with Yorkshire have prepared him for his new role with Amazon.
I was born in Barnsley and that’s where I went to school and college, he writes.
I went to the University of Sheffield and graduated with a material science degree, before joining a company that forged products for the aerospace industry.
Around four years later, I joined British Steel. The steel industry is where things started to happen for me.
I spent 18 years in the industry, and during that time I had fantastic opportunities and a wide range of roles. I worked on everything from research to engineering and I have such fond memories of that time.
The steel industry gave me the opportunity to do a Masters in Metallurgy at Sheffield Hallam University and I also completed an MBA at Sheffield University.
That part of my career shaped the person I am today. The people who work in the steel industry are so passionate about what they do and I’m so grateful for the experiences I had and the people I met during that time of my life.
As my career in steel progressed, I started to become more interested in the technical and data sides of my job, but I also wanted to have a people-focused role that allowed me to help people develop and grow.
Around the same time, Amazon’s footprint in Yorkshire was really starting to grow. I’d learned about the different operations roles available at the company and it sounded like Amazon could give me the opportunity to follow a different path, powered by all the experiences and knowledge I had from the steel industry.
I joined Amazon in 2016 as an operations manager, working at the original fulfilment centre in Doncaster. The following year, I moved to a newer fulfilment centre on Doncaster iPort and moved up the ladder to become a senior operations manager.
That’s when things started to take off for me at Amazon. I spent the next few years working at Amazon buildings in Doncaster and Chesterfield, eventually becoming a site leader.
In 2023, I moved across Yorkshire to open Amazon’s fulfilment centre in Wakefield.
At the time, our building in Wakefield was the first modern-generation Amazon Robotics centre in Yorkshire. In 2025, I’m moving across Yorkshire once again to open the UK’s newest Amazon fulfilment centre in Hull, which will be home to the latest advancements in Amazon Robotics technology.
The opening will create 2,000 jobs in Hull – something I’m very proud of. This will be the biggest challenge of my career, and the most exciting.
This is an opportunity for me to help build a new landscape for people in Yorkshire to come here and grow their careers. It’s exciting for people in Hull because they’ll have fantastic opportunities to develop here, but also internationally.
Amazon offers limitless opportunities to work in locations around the world and that’s what I’m most excited about with the launch of the Hull fulfilment centre – bringing those global opportunities to people in Yorkshire.
I can speak with authority on those global opportunities. I am lucky to visit many countries around the world with Amazon on a regular basis, providing leadership advice and training to operations managers. Earlier this year, I travelled to India to meet our colleagues there in what was a hugely rewarding and educational experience.
I’m proud of my Amazon journey so far, but the best is yet to come. And, if truth be known, I’m more than a little proud of extending the presence of Yorkshire in the Amazon network!
READ MORE: