Automaker Aims to Capitalize on Tech Layoffs

Jaguar Land Rover set up a job portal for newly unemployed software engineers.

It’s been a tough few weeks for Silicon Valley’s tech workforce.

Many of the industry’s titans have announced thousands of layoffs amid a changing economic landscape and some extremely company-specific turbulence: the shifting e-commerce sector affecting Amazon, Facebook’s various metaverse issues, and whatever’s going on at Elon Musk’s Twitter, to name a few.

But although it’s never fun losing a job, on the bright side, there’s certainly no shortage of companies that could use skilled software engineers and other tech experts.

One of those companies went so far as to set up a new website specifically targeting any recently displaced tech workers who might want to try out a new, quite different industry.

Jaguar Land Rover hopes that hundreds of newly jobless tech workers could help it develop and build its new fleet of electric vehicles.

The iconic British automaker, now owned by Indian carmaker Tata, set up a new job portal seeking applicants for 800 jobs across numerous advanced technology positions, including machine learning, data science, electrified powertrains and self-driving systems. The company expects that most of the hires would focus on its data collection efforts.

A Jaguar spokesman told Reuters that the newly available software talent was “fortuitous” both for the automaker and other companies, and that many of the posts it hopes to fill have remained vacant for “quite a long time.”

For any laid-off tech workers in California, however, a new job at Jaguar could require some relocation. Most of the jobs will be in the company’s native U.K., though there are some posts in the U.S. as well as Ireland, Hungary, India and China. Some of the tech companies in question, reports noted, maintain offices in London and Dublin.

Jaguar Land Rover has said it hopes to be entirely electric by 2025.

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