LONDON (Reuters) – Laid off tech industry workers in Britain could find a new home at Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), as the 100-year-old luxury carmaker looks to hire hundreds of engineers to help develop electric car technology.
The carmaker, which wants to become an “electric-first” business from 2025, on Friday announced a jobs portal for displaced tech workers to fill 800 roles spanning self-driving, electrification, machine learning and data science.
The company said it believed workers leaving big tech groups like Amazon were most likely to have the required skills to fill new roles in Britain, Ireland, the United States, India, China and Hungary.
The majority of the jobs will be in Britain.
The hiring drive comes after thousands of layoffs in recent weeks at U.S. tech firms including Twitter, Meta and Amazon, some of which have offices in London and Dublin, Ireland.
“Our digital transformation journey is well underway but being able to recruit highly skilled digital workers is an important next step,” Chief Information Officer Anthony Battle said in a statement.
JLR last year announced an electrification strategy under which all Jaguar cars would be fully electric by 2024 and an electric option would be offered across its entire portfolio including Land Rover.
The company is owned by India’s Tata Motors.
(Reporting by Sachin Ravikumar; Editing by Mark Potter)