The global chief information officer, Lori Beer, said on Wednesday that PLANO, Texas's Reuters-JPMorgan Chase Co plans to hire 2,000 engineers worldwide through the end of the year despite a worsening economy.
The biggest U.S. lender added more than 5,000 software developers and data scientists last year, a move that hopes to attract a couple thousand more at a time when technology giants have stopped hiring or are cutting jobs. Tech workers make up about 20% of the bank's 278,000 strong global workforce.
Beer said in an interview at the bank's office in Plano, Texas, that they're definitely still hiring, at DevUp, an internal JPMorgan conference that gathers 500 of the company's top engineers. The investment signals JPMorgan is a safe place through the uncertain economic times. Beer said that when you're going into a tough economic time and things are very volatile, it does play into our favor.
The bank has a number of roles, including general software engineering, data science, cybersecurity and cloud computing.
Competition in hot technology job markets, such as Silicon Valley, Seattle, Texas and India has abated slightly, with fewer candidates weighing multiple job offers at the same time, Beer said. Some technology companies, crypto exchanges, and financial firms are cutting jobs and slowing hiring because global economic growth slows. The Plano campus, built on a former horse farm, more closely resembles the tech offices of Silicon Valley than its imposing headquarters on New York's Madison Avenue. The new buildings are filled with natural light and meeting spaces populated with couches and white boards. There are other typical tech-company fixtures, including large cafeterias offering a variety of cuisines, and Ping-pong and pool tables. There are also local touches, including a smoke house serving barbecue.
In the past few years, banks have faced fierce competition for workers from tech companies that paid large amounts of compensation in company stock. Engineers were attracted to tech companies that built novel products and services at speed, with casual cultures and abundant perks.
Banks were sometimes seen as stuffy businesses running on older technology where innovation was stifled by strict regulations.
Beer said JPMorgan aims to debunk that perception.
How do we break out of the myth and help people understand the innovation that's happening here? Beer praised opportunities to work on projects that affect millions of customers or move trillions of dollars. For example, engineers could move applications to the cloud, bolster the bank's cyber defenses or automate back-office processes.
Analysts have questioned JPMorgan's plan to spend $14.1 billion on technology this year. At its investor day in May, JPMorgan executives outlined some initiatives, such as personalization for its mobile app, improving payments offerings for e-commerce, and modernizing infrastructure. In the past few years, many U.S. banks have made it a priority to invest in their own technology.
In Texas this week, Beer and Sandhya Sridharan, head of core engineering and JPMorgan's development platform, greet a group that consisted mostly of vice presidents and associates who write the code that underpins JPMorgan systems, along with technology leaders from the bank's major divisions.
A lot of this is about human interaction, the collaboration, the trust you build, and you can't do that over Zoom, Sridharan said.