Tracking Tesla Job Postings

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June 3, 2021

We have spent hundreds of hours creating a database that compiles job posting data from companies we follow and in which we invest. We have kept this proprietary; however, given how closely so many people try to track Tesla’s hiring sprees, we have decided to open our 2020-2021 Tesla job postings database to the public. Tesla’s hiring over the past six quarters has been particularly interesting to follow, especially as Tesla builds two new state-of-the-art factories. We hope you find our visualizations fun and useful.

January 2021 was the peak, where our data show the highest monthly new job postings. These charts and maps can be misleading, as they show when the jobs were posted, not when the jobs were filled. That being said, it is helpful to understand for which jobs, in which locations a company is hiring.

All of these charts and maps are interactive. You can click data series to show/hide, and you can pause the timelines on the maps and hover over each data point for more information on the individual job posting.

Initial Takeaways

Tesla breaks its jobs into 14 categories. Among the top four, “Service & Energy Installation” saw the highest surge since last summer, followed by “Manufacturing”. The category “Service & Energy Installation” is vague, but it has been the fastest growing segment for which Tesla seems to be hiring since July, 2020. In the chart below, the majority of “Service & Energy Installation” jobs contain the words “install”, “electrician”, “energy”, “vehicle technician”, and “Solar Roof”.

Since last summer, Tesla has been hiring many of its solar and energy installers that previously worked as independent contractors, though those jobs would not necessarily show up as new job postings unless Tesla makes those individuals reapply. Still, though, job titles containing the word “electrician” are among the highest “Service & Energy Installation” positions. Note some postings may be double counted, as these are only results from keywords within the job names.

It appears Tesla went on two hiring sprees for “Solar Roof” positions in the summer of 2020 and winter of 2020/2021, though those positions tend not to necessarily contain the word “install” (including “installation” and “installer”), as the two do not appear strongly correlated. Tesla typically refers to Solar Roof installer positions as “Solar Roofer”. Since the beginning of 2020, Tesla has posted more jobs for Solar Roof than vehicle technicians.

Among Tesla’s five “Gigafactories”, Fremont factory, and Palo Alto headquarters, the two factories currently producing vehicles have remained the focus for new job postings. Recently, there has been a surge in job postings at Gigafactory 3 in Shanghai. The dotted blue line shows how many internships Tesla posts, which are historically posted in the winter.

Fremont has had consistently high volumes of job postings since June 2020. Hirings at Gigafactory Shanghai surged toward the end of 2020, likely due to MIC Model Y production ramping, and job postings have remained abundant there throughout 2021. Shanghai job postings will likely continue to rise as Tesla builds out its new R&D center there.

Gigafactory Texas and Gigafactory Berlin should have more job postings as those factories get closer to construction completion and the start of production. Gigafactory Texas appears to be further ahead than Gigafactory Berlin, based on its job postings in several categories. We pointed this out in a thread on Twitter in April.

The heat map shows the volume of job openings at various Tesla locations. Unsurprisingly, Fremont, Austin, Berlin, and Shanghai have consistently high volumes of job postings. Other hotspots include Sparks, NV; Hawthorne, CA; Beijing, China; and Shenzhen, China.

In Q4 2020, TSLA’s SG&A expenses increased 38.6% Y/Y to $969M. This increase can be attributed to, in part, opening new showrooms and service centers, as well as expanding sales, marketing, and legal departments across China and Europe. Before the global Model 3 rollout, Tesla’s quarterly SG&A was between $600M-$750M. As Tesla continues to shift its focus to China and Europe, these expenses should maintain a similar growth rate. Obviously, Tesla does not break out SG&A, so this job data can be especially helpful in trying to understand where the additional capital is being deployed. The answer: mostly China. [See our May 20, 2021 note]

Tesla's Real Focus of 2021: China

Gigafactory Shanghai almost always outpaces other Tesla locations in terms of job postings, especially recently. In March, Elon Musk said in an interview, “China in the long term will be [Tesla’s] biggest market, both where we make the most number of vehicles and where we have the most number of customers.” Musk knows Tesla needs to produce a car specifically for the Chinese market, and fast. [See our February 8th, 2021 note]

It is not surprising that Gigafactory Shanghai is out-hiring all other Tesla locations, even as GF4 and GF5 scale. Gigafactory Shanghai needs all the help it can get if Tesla wants to keep up with the growing competition in the largest EV market. S3XY models won’t be sexy forever, especially when domestic automakers can already give Chinese consumers what they want in a vehicle (and for a lot cheaper, in most cases).

“Design” job postings have been popping up in Texas, Berlin, and Shanghai. It seems Tesla is looking to design “market vehicles” unique to Europe and China, and has been recently posting jobs for designers and engineers specifically for the new R&D center in Shanghai. The primary objective of Tesla’s new R&D center is to develop a “Chinese-style” EV, which may be Tesla's first “$25k model”. Tesla has been hiring for the R&D team for a while, but some job posts (along with an interesting Franz von Holzhausen recruitment video) indicate it has yet to hire a Chief Designer and Senior Vehicle Designer for the new Chinese model. The fact that Tesla is still looking for design heads for the China model suggests the car is not coming anytime soon.

The new Shanghai R&D center will have 20 laboratories for vehicle design, engineering, development, testing, etc.; among them will likely be a battery testing facility. Battery safety is an important factor for Chinese consumers purchasing EVs; Tesla is hiring battery testing engineers, likely to address this concern. Most of these positions have yet to be hired.

The map below is the same as the one above, but with different colors assigned to job categories.

Tracking Turnover at Tesla

Some of the most telling data are the turnover rates across positions. Tesla assigns a unique ID number to each job posting, known as a Requisition ID (Req. ID). As far as we have tracked, Req. IDs stay with employees through promotions, and are typically only reused when Tesla employees quit or are fired. By tracking how long between postings using the same Req. ID, we get a sense of how long employees stay with Tesla, and which divisions/teams have high turnover.

The same Req. ID may be used in different regions for different job titles, so they are not always sequentially suggestive. Throughout the past two years, Tesla has hidden the date positions were added and sometimes doesn’t post the Req. IDs, but we can almost always find it in the source code of the posting.

We will not be sharing these data publicly, but we have noticed a recent uptick in high-level departures, notably from the Autopilot and cell teams, and they aren’t being filled.

“Legal & Government Affairs” job postings have increased over the past few months, suggesting Tesla is shaking up its legal/compliance department. There have been recent postings for in-house legal positions, some at the most senior levels, in Fremont, Palo Alto, Austin, Berlin, Amsterdam, Oslo, Tokyo, and several cities in China. Tesla has come under fire for lacking effective counsel, and instead letting Elon Musk call the shots, which could explain why the company is looking to hire more lawyers and policy advisors globally.

Most of the recent “Legal & Government Affairs” job postings appear to be in China. Tesla was summoned by China’s State Administration for Market Regulation to discuss quality complaints in early February 2021, so Tesla may be hiring more legal professionals to help avoid clashing with Chinese authorities. Tesla/Musk have been much more cooperative with the Chinese Government than with the U.S. Government.

Until May, there had only been 17 job postings within the “Marketing & Communications” category in 2021, which was not surprising, given Tesla scrapped its PR department. However, last month, Tesla posted more jobs for Marketing & Communications positions than the prior 16 months combined. All of the "Marketing & Communications" positions posted in May were in China, where Tesla desperately needs them. It is important to note 49% of Tesla's "Marketing & Communications" positions posted since 2020 were for internships, 56% this year, and 2/3 in May.

This map shows which positions have been filled (closed), and which remain open. We typically see jobs that require more experience remain open longer; low-skilled and entry-level positions typically fill faster. In the U.S., remote and energy installation positions in areas where Tesla/SolarCity never had a presence appear to fill much faster than bigger hubs. Tesla appears to have filled a lot of positions in Europe. Clusters of red dots suggest new showrooms and service centers opening, which tend to have much higher turnover rates in Europe (the same positions/Req. IDs at the same locations, so red followed by green). In China, many positions posted since November remain open.

In January 2021, Tesla posted a heap of jobs in the Yangtze Delta, and almost all of them remain open. In late February/early March 2021, another cluster of jobs were posted in the Pearl River Delta. Tesla has not filled most positions in those regions, as wages are much higher in China’s first-tier and second-tier cities, but it is clear those hubs are Tesla’s focus for 2021 in China.

A clear take away from these data is that China is becoming the focus of Tesla since Q3 2020. Though most positions are largely unfilled, Tesla is recruiting all over China. Beginning in late December, Tesla has been actively recruiting directly from Chinese universities. We have not seen Tesla do this, especially at that scale. 44.6% of these Chinese university positions are summer 2021 internships. Still, though, the rest are assumed to be positions for which Tesla is trying to recruit students directly after graduation. This is a common practice for major MNCs in China, to which Tesla has finally caught on.

There was a surge of jobs with the words “electrode”, “cell”, or “pilot line” in the title after Tesla’s Battery Day in September. In true Musk fashion, he and Drew Baglino touted “novel” battery technologies before Tesla had begun hiring specifically for those positions. New job postings mentioning “pilot line” for 4680 cells peaked in January, despite many Tesla fans hoping Tesla had been rolling production-ready cells off that line since the fall. We noted in March that key positions for inventing important technologies for Tesla’s 4680 cells, notably battery cell jobs in San Diego (Maxwell) for the dry electrode coating process, were not yet filled. Some of those jobs have since been filled/removed from Tesla’s job postings, and some remain open, suggesting Tesla’s new cells may still be stuck at the lab level.

As for the pilot line, since January 2020, Tesla has posted 105 positions specifically for cell design, engineering, and production at 47700 Kato Road and 1055 Page Avenue (AKA “Kato Road”, where Tesla is building its 4680 pilot line), just two miles south of its Fremont Factory. Of those, 62 positions are still open.

This is a searchable database of 22,938 Tesla job postings from January 1, 2020 to May 31, 2021. Tesla had over 70,000 people employed by the end of last year, and could employ over 100,000 people by the end of next year, according to Electrek. These are just some of our initial thoughts. You could spend hours poking around the maps alone.

Cheers.

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