Jio, Vodafone step up hiring as 5G related job postings up 65%

NEW DELHI: As India and other countries take concrete steps to adopt 5G, the number of job postings by telcos related to 5G increased by 65 per cent last month, from 5,265 job postings in January to 8,667 in July, a report showed on Wednesday.

Active jobs were up by 46 per cent, whereas job closures went up by 75 per cent in the same period, according to GlobalData's analysis of 175 companies globally.

Reliance Jio is hiring for 'Lead 5G Core & Cloud Architecture' to support diverse use cases and core products for 5G.

Vodafone Idea's posting for an 'AGM-Practice Lead-Smart Mobility' will be required to have experience in the smart mobility vertical and 5G-connected cars and electric vehicles.

"India's 5G spectrum auction ended with Reliance Jio emerging as the top bidder along with Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, and Adani Group. Bharti Airtel is planning to launch 5G services in India before the end of August," said Sherla Sriprada, business fundamentals analyst at GlobalData.

Major players such as Ericsson, China Telecom, Deutsche Telekom and American Tower were discussing investment around CapEx and 5G production in 2022.

Several tech companies are looking to hire engineers for developing 5G use cases.

"For jobs such as network administration, testing and software development the firms are likely to hire experts in areas such as infrastructure development, equipment, network operations, and spectrum services," Sriprada added.

Apple has also advertised roles in the 5G protocols layer and is hiring for 'RF Systems Architect', which looks at defining and researching emerging 6G spectrum policy, use cases and trends for radio access networks in advance for 6G radios.

Nokia has also opened a 5G Industrial Incubation Lab in South Australia and posted a 'Graduate Engineer in Technology' role.

"It's not only 5G investments that companies are looking at as they have also shown an interest in 6G investments and related roles," said Sriprada.

Over 130 jobs were posted between January 2022 to July 2022 based on 6G as a title search.