TD Bank plans to hire more than 2,000 tech workers this year amid talent war

 TD Bank is North America's 5^th largest bank by assets and serves more than 26 million customers

•  Toronto-Dominion Bank plans to hire more than 2,000 tech workers this year, more than six times the number added last year, pitting the lender against fintech firms in the talent war.
  
  

On Wednesday, Canada's Toronto Dominion Bank (TD Bank) announced plans to hire more than 2,000 technology workers in 2022, focusing on core skills in new technologies such as cloud, development operations, machine learning and automation.

According to a statement on Wednesday, the hiring comes as the bank strives to increase its digital focus and track the more than 300 technology positions added in 2021. Toronto Dominion declined to say how much it plans to spend on the hiring.

Greg Keeley, senior executive vice president, platforms and technology, said that as the bank continues to evolve the customer experience, developing and empowering skilled technology talent will be key to the bank's overall strategy becoming a future-oriented organization.

" It is undeniably an incredibly competitive landscape as financial services compete with Big Tech and Fintech for top talent in the industry," Rizwan Khalfan, TD's chief digital and payments officer, said in an interview. "There is a war for talent in the market… We know we need more capacity and capability, and we're going to go out and acquire that."

The bank said in a separate statement that it is launching new equity, diversity and inclusion platform to ensure different perspectives and experiences are incorporated into the development of its products and services.

Keeley additionally said the bank is chipping away at preparing its current employees in the abilities they need and spotlights on creating exciting opportunities as part of its appeal for recently hired team members.

At TD, the bank is in the midst of a long-term effort to shift its approach to technology from one focused on products sold by individual business units to one with a team that spans the entire bank, allowing TD to build new technologies once but deploy them repeatedly.

TD is also modernizing data access in collaboration with Microsoft Azure and Databriks to create a central cloud that can support analytics tools and services for banks. 

In the financial services sector, the demand for cloud computing engineers and DevOps - a field that combines software development with IT operations - has increased in the past year. According to Robert Fox, Director Of Financial Services at Accenture Canada, the need for people with skills has increased by up to 400%.