ByteDance to Hire 10,000 Employees Worldwide Amid Global Economic Downturn

Beijing-based ByteDance, the owner of the hit short-video app TikTok and Chinese news aggregator Toutiao, has started a recruiting spree in the middle of coronavirus tumult, opening 10,000 positions globally, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

SEE ALSO: TikTok Maker ByteDance Appoints New China Leaders, Global Employees Approach 100,000

Around one-third of the open positions are high-level research or software engineering jobs, according to the information on an internal website provided to Bloomberg. The new hires will support Bytedance’s ecosystem of apps like TikTok and Toutiao, while strengthening the company’s operations in gaming and e-commerce industries.

The company founder and global Chief Executive Officer Zhang Yiming said in an internal memo last month that the company is expected to reach a 100,000 global headcount by year-end, which is comparable to China’s e-commerce behemoth Alibaba Group, which currently has roughly 100,000 employees.

“ByteDance has rapidly developed from a single product to a giant platform that provides multiple services to our customers all over the globe,” Zhang said. “We expect to reach 100,000 global employees this year.”

ByteDance is also looking to open nearly 2,000 job positions to recent college graduates and people in Wuhan, where the coronavirus outbreak first began, joining a long list of Chinese companies that support the city that eased its nearly three-month lockdown on April 8. The city is home to 35 top institutes of higher education.