Ant Group expands hiring in blockchain
Alibaba’s fintech affiliate, Ant Group, has launched a new recruitment programme to search for young talents in blockchain and advanced computing technologies, as Chinese’s big tech companies scramble to keep up innovation in tech sectors despite increased scrutiny by regulators.
The Hangzhou-headquartered fintech giant said it is offering 45 different positions that targets qualified students who are scheduled to graduate between November this year and October next year.
The entry-level positions cover the fields of technology, product, design, data and operations that are mainly based in a number of first-tier Chinese cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hangzhou.
The job openings, which account for 86 per cent of Ant Group’s overall target in its latest recruitment programme, focus on blockchain, privacy-preserving computation and graph computing, according to the statement.
Blockchain is the underlying technology behind bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, it has become an important field for Ant Group to search for new revenue stream, and build up ecosystem surrounding it.
Ant’s digital payment app Alipay started to make inroad into blockchain-based non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in June last year by launching 16,000 limited-edition NFTs on its consortium blockchain network “Ant Chain”.
Through the partnership with Dunhuang Research Academy, the NFTs features flying apsaras along with sacred deer from “Mogao Cave” in the Dunhuang of China’s Gansu province, where has been listed as a world heritage site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
Alibaba’s billionaire co-founder is a supporter of blockchain technology despite his cautious views on bitcoin.
Speaking at the 2020 Smart China Expo Online, Jack Ma said “Nowadays, many enterprises add blockchain label to their businesses, hoping to gain attention from investors. In fact, they have nothing to do with blockchain technologies. Alibaba is dealing with transaction volumes of trillion yuan, we will go nowhere without blockchain technologies. Bitcoin might me a bubble, but the underlying technologies-blockchain is not. Blockchain can offer great solution to solve the issues in data privacy and security, intellectual property.”
The new campus recruitment followed a spring campus recruitment programme launched by Ant Group parent Alibaba in late February, which aims to fill more than 150 positions for e-commerce businesses.
The tighter regulatory scrutiny on Chinese tech companies did not stop Alibaba from searching new talents and keeping up innovation. In July, 2021, the company has launched what it describes as the firm’s largest ever recruitment programme for new graduate.
As of December 2021, Alibaba Group has more than 252,084 employees around the world, but it did not reveal the exact number of job positions for new graduate.
China’s big tech companies are always competing aggressively for new talent as the country has couples of million university graduate looking for jobs each year.
According to survey conducted by Zhaopin.com, internet, computer software and hardware, finance and consulting service are the most popular industries for fresh graduate to embark on.