Alibaba Group (NYSE:BABA) is going on a hiring spree.
The Chinese multinational says its cloud computing unit will hire 5,000 staff globally between now and the end of this year to meet growing demand. Positions to be filled will be in areas such as network, database, servers, chips and artificial intelligence.
"The digital transformation journey for businesses in China, which was previously expected to take three to five years, is now likely to be accelerated to be completed within one year," said Jeff Zhang, President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, in a news release. "To move forward in full speed, we are not only building trusted cloud technologies and services, but also investing in worldwide IT talents."
In April, Alibaba announced that it is investing $28.2 billion U.S. over the next three years on its cloud infrastructure to help speed up the digital transformation of businesses in China following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cloud computing has become one of Alibaba’s fastest-growing segments beyond its core e-commerce business. Revenue from Alibaba Cloud grew 58% in the first quarter of this year to $1.72 billion U.S. and 62% in the 12 months ended March 31 to $5.64 billion U.S.
After Amazon Web Services, Microsoft’s Azure and Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud is the world’s fourth-largest cloud service provider with a 6% global market share, according to Canalys, a technology market research firm.
