GM intends to hire 8,000 for new tech jobs in 2022

General Motors Co. says it will hire more than 8,000 new technology employees this year as it works to develop its platform technology in a push to become known as a tech company that also makes vehicles. 

GM's pandemic-created "work appropriately" strategy allowing employees to have the flexibility to work where they want has helped the automaker compete with big tech companies and expand teams to develop vehicle software, engineer fuel cells and advance electric battery design, the company says. 

"With work appropriately, it has given each of our different business units at the manager level an independence to decide what makes the most sense for them in their talent strategy, which has just cascaded all the way across the organization to help us be more competitive," said Kyle Lagunas, GM's head of talent attraction, sourcing and insight.

GM already has started hiring for: fuel cell development, engineering product development, global electrification controls software and electronics, software development, global innovation, manufacturing and manufacturing engineering, IT, GM Defense, engineering product development.

In late 2020, GM set a goal to hire 3,000 new tech employees. The company exceeded that goal and hired 10,000 people with a third hired for tech, software and engineering jobs. Last year, the Detroit automaker hired from more than 3,700 companies and nearly 300 universities across the U.S. and will continue to build on that in 2022. 

GM has been able to attract talent from big tech companies with competitive offers, the remote work option and also the automaker's values since "everything that we do is all around making the world a better place," said Iwao Fusillo, GM chief data and analytics officer.

"There was a time where ... we were getting picked off by big tech,"  Fusillo said. "It's now the other way around, where we are regularly hiring folks away. I believe we're competitive and then we have that extra edge around the work appropriately" strategy.

GM isn't alone in the move to hire more software experts. Ford Motor Co. has also been on a hiring spree in the software department. And rival Stellantis NV is creating a software and data academy that will retrain more than 1,000 internal engineers. By 2024, the company is looking to have 4,500 software engineers with talent hubs around the globe.

Additionally, as a part of its partnership with Amazon.com Inc., Stellantis is introducing a global curriculum called the Agile-Auto Software and Data Academy covering software, data and cloud technology. The automaker says it will train more than 5,000 developers and engineers by 2024 in the Amazon Web Services-related technologies.

Staff writer Breana Noble contributed

khall@detroitnews.com

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