Jaguar Land Rover courts coders caught in big tech layoffs

Got the boot from Musk or Zuck? Automaker has 800 techie vacancies to fill

Jaguar Land Rover, the famed UK-based automaker, is looking to fill a long list of tech and engineering vacancies by appealing to victims of the recent round of Silicon Valley layoffs.

In a statement published on Friday, the company, owned by Indian conglomerate Tata Group since 2008, said it was looking to fill openings by creating a new jobs portal for displaced workers from the tech industry to "explore career opportunities, offering hybrid working patterns."

Roles it is looking to fill include those in autonomous driving, artificial intelligence, electrification, cloud software, data science, machine learning, and more. The company said it was becoming "a digital-first and data-driven organization" in the statement.

The overtures come as the tech industry hemorrhages staff. Facebook owner Meta is laying off more than 11,000 employees, thousands have exited Twitter, and Amazon says it could shed 10,000 corporate and technology jobs.

Website Layoffs.fyi estimates more than 118,000 workers have been laid off from more than 760 tech companies this year as the valuation of the businesses declined and market conditions became more challenging.

"We are further strengthening our data and digital skills base so we can deliver our Reimagine strategy and become an electric-first business from 2025 and achieve carbon net zero by 2039," said JLR.

But JLR chief information officer Anthony Battle said the automaker was short of an overlapping group of skills. "Our digital transformation journey is well under way but being able to recruit highly skilled digital workers is an important next step. We are pleased to be able to provide opportunities to talented individuals with digital capabilities."

Meanwhile, Dave Nesbitt, JLR digital product platform director, said the company was creating some of the most digitally advanced vehicles he'd "ever seen."

Jaguar started life as the Swallow Car company in Blackburn during 1922. It changed its name to Jaguar following the Second World War before designing and making a string of classic cars including the E-Type, driven by Swinging Sixties caricature Austin Powers and in the 1970s cult movie Harold and Maude.

Land Rover started out as part of the Rover Company, with the original off-road 4x4 made in 1947. Spending time as part of BMW and Ford, it went on to build the Range Rover, which became a luxury SUV marque famously driven by basketball superstar Michael Jordan in the 1990s and the late Queen Elizabeth, at least some of the time without a driver's license.

For tech pros who have seen enough of the startup scene, JLR could offer the opportunity to join a bit of history. ®