E-commerce Market Battle: Retailers Seeking "IT Developers"

Largest Recruitment of Experienced Professionals Since Lotte ON Launch
GS Retail and 11st Also Securing Developers and Engineers

Having completed year-end executive appointments and organizational restructuring, the distribution industry has begun efforts to "recruit IT developers." After completing large-scale mergers and acquisitions (M&A) this year, the distribution sector is preparing for intensified competition to secure market share in the e-commerce sector next year by securing experienced personnel who can be immediately deployed to strengthen IT competitiveness in advance.

Lotte ON Conducts Largest Scale IT Experienced Hiring

On the 7th, Lotte ON announced that it will conduct an open recruitment for experienced IT and User Experience (UX) professionals from the 8th to the 22nd. This recruitment will be on a triple-digit scale. This is the first large-scale open recruitment since Lotte ON's launch.

Lotte ON highlighted that developers can work flexible hours and locations according to the flexible work system. They also emphasized opportunities for skill enhancement through self-development support funds and official training such as Amazon Web Services (AWS). The recruitment fields include 25 positions across five sectors: Product Manager (PM), Product Developer (PD), Data, Tech, and UX, covering most IT roles. The PM sector covers product display, search and recommendation, ordering, and payment; the PD sector includes frontend, backend, and application (app) development; the Data sector handles data analysis, security, and artificial intelligence (AI); the Tech sector is responsible for cloud operations and security; and the UX sector covers UX design and motion graphics. Lotte ON plans to secure outstanding talent necessary for platform development and operation in line with its recent growth to complete a differentiated shopping platform both online and offline.

Securing Core Talent in Digital and Logistics

GS Retail is also conducting an open recruitment for experienced employees in the Digital Commerce Business Unit (BU) until the 12th. The Digital Commerce BU is a newly established organization formed in July when GS Retail merged with GS Shop, overseeing all e-commerce business areas including GS Shop, GS Fresh Mall, Simply Cook, and Dally Salda. The recruitment fields cover 10 key business roles such as product planning (MD), marketing, and strategy under each brand within the Digital Commerce BU. GS Retail plans to focus on nurturing digital commerce and grow the business scale to 5.8 trillion KRW by 2025. To this end, it will invest 270 billion KRW in talent development and IT infrastructure construction.

11st is recruiting experienced engineers responsible for development and operation in search services, advertising platforms, and simple payment platforms. Qualification requirements and recruitment deadlines vary by field, including big data processing system development, system and cloud engineers, and iOS app development.

SSG.com also announced recruitment for experienced positions in IT and logistics last month and is currently conducting hiring procedures. Most of these IT and development personnel will be involved in logistics automation and delivery systems, including logistics network and infrastructure planning, fulfillment business and service planning, seller acquisition, logistics center project management, and last-mile network planning and operation.

Preparing for the 2022 Distribution Transformation

The distribution industry expects that following this year’s digital transformation, a new digital commerce era fully integrating online and offline will open in 2022. To this end, they are competing to secure experienced personnel who can implement the new shopping environment.

Since last year, the gaming and startup sectors have aggressively attracted IT talent by offering high salaries and stock options, causing even outstanding developers to leave amid an already tight developer shortage, making large-scale recruitment inevitable. An industry insider said, “Each distribution company continues to increase personnel to strengthen their online and digital organizations, but in terms of scale, they cannot compete with companies like Naver or Coupang, and to differentiate themselves from emerging e-commerce companies like Market Kurly in platform composition and services, they have no choice but to compete fiercely for talent.”