Alibaba Cloud aims to recruit 5,000 people globally by the end of the financial year.
The new jobs will be focusing on networks, databases, servers, chips, and artificial intelligence.
Alibaba's expansion
Jeff Zhang, president of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, said: “The digital transformation journey for businesses in China, which was previously expected to take three to five years, is now likely to be completed within one year.
“In light of the fast-growing demand from global clients in all sectors, we are continuing with our commitment to offering world-class cloud services.
“To move forward in full speed, we are not only building trusted cloud technologies and services but also investing in worldwide IT talents who are pioneering the development of cutting-edge cloud and data intelligence technologies.”
This hiring spree follows Alibaba’s plan to spend 200bn yuan ($28.2bn) on its cloud infrastructure over the next three years.
One of its fastest-growing business sectors, Alibaba's cloud division hit 10.7 billion yuan ($1.5bn) in revenues in the fourth quarter - up 62 percent.
The company operates 63 availability zones in 21 regions around the world but has limited market penetration outside Asia. The company has also invested heavily in its own AI inferencing chips and RISC-V hardware.
Covid-19 immunity
New findings from Synergy Research Group found that cloud spending was up 37 percent from last year and seemingly not affected by the ongoing pandemic.
John Dinsdale, the chief analyst at Synergy Research Group, said: “While Covid-19 is having a devastating impact on communities and economies around the world, indications are that it is having a mildly positive impact on the cloud infrastructure services market.
“For sure, the pandemic is causing some issues for cloud providers, but in uncertain times the public cloud is providing flexibility and a safe haven for enterprises that are struggling to maintain normal operations. Cloud provider revenues continue to grow at truly impressive rates, with AWS and Azure in aggregate now having an annual revenue run rate of well over $60bn.”
