At a time when many firms are cutting thousands of jobs, Alibaba has announced plans to hire 5,000 new employees to bolster its Alibaba Cloud division. 

Earlier this year, Alibaba Cloud announced plans to invest $28 billion in its cloud platform over the next three years, with the firm hoping to better compete with American tech juggernauts Amazon and Microsoft. It seems that part of that investment will be dedicated to growing the firm’s workforce, giving it the expertise it needs to compete. 

While the $28 billion investment is spread over the next three years, Alibaba Cloud is hoping to have filled the 5,000 new roles before the end of its financial calendar year, giving it just 10 months. 

Alibaba’s bullish nature towards recruiting new employees comes thanks to a surge in demand for cloud computing services, partly thanks to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. As companies accelerate their digital transformation, they’re increasingly turning to cloud computing providers, and Alibaba Cloud wants to take a bigger piece of the pie. 

“The digital transformation journey for businesses in China, which was previously expected to take three to five years, is now likely to be accelerated and completed within a year,” noted Jeff Zhang, president at Alibaba Cloud Intelligence. 

“We are not only building trusted cloud technologies and services, but also investing in worldwide IT talent who are pioneering the development of cutting-edge cloud and data intelligence technologies.”

While Alibaba Cloud’s recruitment drive is certainly impressive given the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s not the only firm going on a hiring spree. Amazon has also pledged to hire 175,000 additional staff members, although most of those roles will focus on its retail operations. Google, meanwhile, has announced a drastic reduction in the number of new hires it will take on in 2020. The search engine giant will also be dialling back its investment in data centres for the rest of the year.