NEW YORK (REUTERS) - TikTok has plans to hire about 3,000 engineers over the next three years, mostly in Europe, Canada and Singapore, the company told Reuters on Tuesday (Oct 27).
The move shows that the popular short-video app has not given up on its expansion plans despite lingering uncertainty over its ownership. US President Donald Trump has ordered China's ByteDance to divest TikTok amid concerns over the safety of the personal data it handles.
"To support our rapid global growth, we plan to continue expanding TikTok's global engineering team, including adding approximately 3,000 engineers in Canada, Europe, Singapore, as well as the US, over the next three years," a TikTok spokesperson said.
The US will remain one of the engineering hubs for the company and hire more staff, the spokesperson added.
There are about 1,000 engineers working for TikTok outside of China, nearly half of them based in Mountain View, California.
Reuters previously reported that ByteDance plans to invest billions of dollars and recruit hundreds of employees in Singapore, which it has selected as its South-east Asia headquarters.
Mr Trump said last month that a preliminary deal for Oracle and Walmart to take stakes in TikTok had his "blessing", but a formal deal has not materialised after ByteDance said it would not relinquish a majority stake in the app.
A judge will consider on Nov 4 whether the US government will be allowed to ban downloads of TikTok from US app stores, a move that ByteDance has warned would effectively ban its use in the US.
