Toyota to hire more software engineers to boost development of autonomous, electric vehicles

Toyota Motor Corp. will increase its hiring of software engineers from 20 percent to 40 to 50 percent of technical hires from spring to boost the development of autonomous and other next-generation vehicles.

The automaker wishes to strengthen its software development capabilities as it addresses a transformation to connected, autonomous, shared, and electric technologies. It has not disclosed the exact number of technical graduates it would recruit next spring.

Toyota will start making job descriptions available to prospective employees to allow them to acquire the desired skills and increase their chances of being hired and retained long-term.

Japanese companies usually allocate jobs or specific tasks to employees only after they join the company.

Toyota will also increase mid-career hires from 30 percent to half of the company’s total new employees.