Dive Brief:

• Coming off two years of robust expansion, Walmart is hiring 50,000 associates in the U.S. to staff its stores, Sam's Club shops, supply chain facilities and campuses, according to a post from Walmart Chief People Officer Donna Morris.
• The retailer's global technology team is also hiring, with plans to bring in 5,000 new associates worldwide and establish new company hubs in Toronto and Atlanta, Walmart Chief Technology Officer Suresh Kumar said in a separate post.
• For the tech team, Walmart is seeking cybersecurity professionals, architects, developers, software engineers, data scientists, data engineers, technical program managers and product managers. The team grew by 26% last year, Kumar said.

Dive Insight:

The world's biggest retailer is getting bigger. The company already employs 2.3 million associates around the world.

Since the pandemic began, Walmart has also made several hiring blitzes to keep up with growing demand both at its stores and through its website. The company added a record of nearly 4,500 truck drivers to its private fleet last year, according to the post.

The retailer has continued to grow its sales, too. Its U.S. comparable sales were up 5.6% in the fourth quarter and up 6.4% for the full fiscal year, while total U.S. sales hit $393.2 billion in 2021.

With the company's digital sales growing (though at a slower rate than last year) and the launches of third-party fulfillment and logistics services, Walmart has been building out capacity in its supply chain operations as well as its stores.

As it tries to build out staff in a tight labor market, Morris touted Walmart's pay, benefits, inclusive hiring and opportunities to move up in the organization. Its average hourly rate comes in at $16.40. Many Walmart jobs start at $12 an hour, though that can go up to $30 an hour in select roles and markets.

The retailer's tech hiring is also a sign of the growing importance of technology at Walmart, as it competes with Amazon, which has a long history of considering itself a tech company attracting engineering and science talent.

Kumar said Walmart's tech team now includes more than 20,000 associates. Last year, its hiring increased 85% in data engineering, 45% in data science and 31% in software engineering, according to the post.

The tech team develops "the foundational technologies on which customer experiences are built, including cloud, data, enterprise architecture, DevOps, infrastructure and security," Kumar said.

Associates are scattered around the country and the world, with more than 10 locations in the U.S. and multiple offices in India, as well as a location in Costa Rica. Walmart aims to make Toronto one of its major Global Tech team hubs, with plans to add hundreds of jobs in the coming months.