Ride-hailing major Uber has announced to hire nearly 250 engineers for its Bengaluru and Hyderabad-based teams, as the company expands operations for its engineering and product work in the country. Uber said that it has started to reach out to prospective candidates for building new teams and adding to existing ones, including Uber infrastructure, Eats, Marketplace, Risk and Payments, Uber for Business (U4B), marketing and advertising platforms.

"Our teams in Hyderabad and Bengaluru work on important global mandates, and pioneer various industry-first innovations," Manikandan Thangarathnam, Senior Director, Engineering was quoted as saying by Techglocal. 

"In order to serve more people across the globe, we're expanding our teams and are looking for bright engineering minds so we can collectively solve mobility and delivery challenges across all our global markets.," he added.

The current round of hiring will strengthen the company's rider and driver growth, delivery, eats, digital payments, risk and compliance, marketplace, customer obsession, infrastructure, adtech, data, safety and finance technology teams.

Uber said its expansion plans are in line with its vision to make mobility and delivery more accessible, and to become the backbone of transportation in over 10,000 cities across the globe.

The tech teams have been heavily invested in building technology to enable safer rides and delivery across cities, including enabling mask-detection features and updating maps across countries.

To facilitate more effective social distancing measures, Uber's engineers have been accelerating digital payments in several countries, and also using Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to digitise several parts of Uber's operations, including driver onboarding, and uploading digital menus.

Meanwhile, the company has announced Rs 3.65 crore free rides package, which includes facilitating transportation of life-saving oxygen cylinders, concentrators, ventilators and other critical medical equipment to strengthen India's healthcare system during a devastating second wave of Covid-19.

As part of its larger commitment to help communities recover, Uber will continue supporting India's ongoing vaccination drive where it has already pledged free rides worth Rs 10 crore for citizens travelling to and from authorised vaccination centres. (SAM)