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ByteDance
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TikTok owner ByteDance opens 31 chip design jobs, joining Big Tech rivals amid China’s self-sufficiency drive

  • ByteDance said building a chip design team remains in a preliminary stage as it explores application-specific chips to support its services
  • ByteDance’s effort resembles moves from rivals like Alibaba, Tencent and Xiaomi amid China’s push to fast-track chip industry development

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ByteDance headquarters seen in Beijing on January 7, 2022. Photo: Shutterstock
Che Pan
TikTok owner ByteDance is looking to fill dozens of new semiconductor jobs listed on its website in the strongest sign yet that it is looking to build an in-house chip design unit, following in the footsteps of Big Tech peers in China.

The Beijing-based social media giant, and China’s most valuable unicorn, confirmed in a statement that it is hiring semiconductor talent, but said building a chip team remains in a preliminary stage. ByteDance is exploring the possibility of designing application-specific chips for its own use to support the increasing computing needs of its services, the company said, adding that it will not manufacture chips.

ByteDance’s job board on its website currently shows 31 related listings, spanning positions that cover the entire chip design cycle. These include intellectual property (IP) core design, testing, and system-on-a-chip (SoC) tapeout, an important process for discovering deficiencies before mass production.

One listing for a “back-end chip design engineer” requires candidates to have experience in advanced chip-making for the 12-nanometre and 7nm processes. Other listings require experience with electronic design automation (EDA) tools and Arm-based digital IP core design.

ByteDance joins an increasing list of tech companies pouring resources into semiconductor development, as Beijing seeks to reduce China’s reliance on foreign technologies. The country’s biggest tech giants have joined the race, including Tencent Holdings and Alibaba Group Holding, owner of the South China Morning Post. Both companies, along with ByteDance, have large cloud computing operations.

“Big cloud companies are investing in chips to save costs by using Arm-based chips,” said Sravan Kundojjala, a senior analyst at Strategy Analytics. “Instead of going with general-purpose chips from Intel, AMD and NVIDIA, these cloud vendors are trying to build purpose-built AI accelerators to save costs and get better performance per watt.”

Custom chips are also increasingly important to smartphone makers. While Huawei Technologies Co’s HiSilicon has been hampered by US sanctions, Xiaomi and Oppo stepped up efforts in semiconductor design.
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