TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance has kicked off a new wave of hiring in the middle of the global COVID-19 crisis, recruiting talents for 10,000 positions, on track to hit this year’s goal of expanding its global headcount to 100,000, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.
A third of these openings are high-level research or software coding jobs, Bloomberg wrote, adding that new hires will support ByteDances’ ecosystem of apps like TikTok and Jinri Toutiao, among other platforms, also boosting the firm’s operation in new verticals like gaming and e-commerce.
The founder of the valuable startup, Zhang Yiming, first mentioned last month in an internal memo the company’s intention to reach 100,000 staff in total by the end of 2020, KrASIA reported.
“In the past eight years, ByteDance has grown rapidly, from a small product to a platform that provides service to users around the world,” Zhang said.
Currently, the company has 60,000 employees in more than 180 cities and 30 countries around the world, with services covering 150 countries and regions.
ByteDance’s hiring goal will put the firm on par with Alibaba, which currently has about 100,000 employees, Bloomberg noted.
This article is part of KrASIA’s “China Brief” section, where KrASIA’s reporters will provide quick daily updates about the tech ecosystem in China.