Months after laying off 600 employees in India, Uber is recruiting 140 engineers for its tech teams in Bengaluru and Hyderabad to build ‘cutting-edge products’ in areas such as rider and driver growth, delivery, marketplace, customer service, digital payments, risk and compliance, safety, and finance technology.
Uber said in a statement that it has started reaching out to prospective candidates for building new teams and adding to existing ones, including Uber infrastructure, marketplace, Uber for Business (U4B), marketing and advertising platforms.
Uber’s tech teams, it has said, have been heavily invested in building mask recognition capabilities to ensure that driver partners wear masks for their own safety as well as that of riders. To enable more effective social distancing measures, Uber’s engineers have been accelerating digital payments and also use advanced Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to onboard restaurant menus onto Uber marketplace for enabling greater earning opportunities.
Uber recently hired Jayaram Valliyur as senior director to lead its global finance technology team, spread across multiple geographies. Prior to Uber, Jayaram worked for Amazon for 14 years, where he was responsible for bootstrapping and scaling its India development center. He also led teams in charge of transportation, new seller registration and identity verification.
Commenting on Uber’s tech hiring drive, Jayaram remarked, “We’re leveraging India’s outstanding product and engineering talent to fuel our next wave of products and services. We’re looking to hire engineers who’re deeply technical and passionate about solving complex problems in the mobility and delivery space. We welcome the country’s top talent and will provide them a very enriching experience.’’
On May 26, Uber said that it was laying off 25% of its India workforce as a fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic. Around 600 full-time positions across driver and rider support, as well as other functions, were impacted.
“The impact of COVID-19 and the unpredictable nature of the recovery has left Uber India SA with no choice but to reduce the size of its workforce,” Pradeep Parameswaran, president, Uber India and South Asia said in a statement.
Around 600 full-time positions across driver and rider support, as well as other functions, were impacted.