TikTok is hiring logistics and e-commerce industry veterans in Seattle and Los Angeles to oversee the design and creation of its own U.S. fulfillment network, according to a series of job listings first reported by Axios this morning.
The social video juggernaut, part of China’s ByteDance, currently offers e-commerce capabilities in the U.K. and Southeast Asia. The job postings, taken together, make clear TikTok’s ambitions to leverage its base of more than 1 billion users to become a bigger player in online shopping and e-commerce logistics.
“The e-commerce industry has seen tremendous growth in recent years and has become a hotly contested space amongst leading Internet companies, and its future growth cannot be underestimated,” reads a job post seeking a Seattle-based logistics solution manager for its global fulfillment network. “With millions of loyal users globally, we believe TikTok is an ideal platform to deliver a brand new and better e-commerce experience to our users.”
Another TikTok job post seeks a Seattle-based business solutions and merchant development manager responsible for developing the company’s fulfillment service as part of a U.S. e-commerce logistics network. This post describes the fulfillment group as an extension of the existing TikTok Shop for third-party sellers.
Another job post seeks a home and living category leader who would be “responsible for building the category operation foundation for the TikTok eCommerce business in US.”
TikTok has raised privacy concerns due to its connections to China, and its extensive use of data to boost engagement through algorithms that tailor content to individual users.
Translating that user engagement into e-commerce in a bigger way could turn TikTok into a larger competitive threat to Amazon, which has an estimated 37.8% share of the U.S. e-commerce market, down slightly from last year.
