Hiring spree: Jaguar Land Rover recruits 81 per cent of tech jobs in UK
Jaguar Land Rover has gone on a hiring spree in the UK, recruiting 81 per cent of its global positions in Britain.
The luxury marque announced today that 280 out of the 300 vacancies currently available are in the UK. This is in addition to the 371 jobs which have already been filled in Britain.
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) – which is also recruiting in countries such as Hungary, Ireland and China – announced the hiring drive in November.
This happened around the same time as mass layoffs started taking place at tech giants such as Twitter, Amazon and Salesforce.
According to data from layoff tracking website layoffs.fyi, almost 155,000 people working in tech firms across the world were let go in 2022.
JLR has decided to capitalise on hundreds of thousands of displaced workers to expedite its electrification strategy, Reimagine.
“Under the Reimagine strategy, our digital transformation is happening at pace, and we need experienced digital and engineering specialists with skills in areas such as AI, autonomous driving, machine learning and data science right now,” said JLR’s chief information officer Anthony Battle.
Announced in February 2021, the Reimagine strategy aims to transform JLR into an “all-electric luxury brand from 2025”.
As part of the plan, all JLR’s models will become electric by the end of the decade.
“We are offering people the chance to work on our next generation of modern luxury electric cars – some of the most sophisticated vehicles ever,” Battle added.
Hagreaves Lansdown’s lead equity analyst Sophie Lund-Yates told City PM pushing forward with recruitment made sense, but “the strategy comes with risk.”
“There’s always a risk that this expenditure is coming at the wrong time, but the flipside to that argument is that getting the transformation underway, and in earnest, as soon as possible, is priority number one,” she said.
The marque made the headlines last week when it announced a 15 per cent surge in the number of vehicles sold to retailers in the last quarter.
JLR delivered over 79,500 cars to dealerships in the three months to 31 December, 5.9 per cent up on the previous three months.
This was driven by the North American and UK markets – which reported a 17 per cent and 13 per cent hike respectively – and came despite China’s Covid-19-induced sales slump.
Jaguar’s hiring spree is also a good sign for the UK automotive industry.
According to data released earlier this month by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), 2022 was the worst year for UK car production in three decades.
Carmakers only produced 1.61m cars over the past 12 months, slightly higher than 1992’s 1.59m vehicles.
Nevertheless, the sector expects to bounce back this year with growth of 15 per cent, which will be worth an additional £10bn.