NEW YORK • TikTok has plans to hire about 3,000 engineers over the next three years, mostly in Europe, Canad a and Singapore, the company said on Tuesday.

The move shows the popular short-video app has not given up on expansion plans despite uncertainty over its ownership. US President Donald Trump has ordered China's ByteDance to divest TikTok amid concerns over data security.

"To support our rapid global growth, we plan to continue expanding TikTok's global engineering team, including adding approximately 3,000 engineers in Canada, Europe, Singapore, as well as the US, over the next three years," a TikTok spokesman said.

The United States will remain one of the engineering hubs for the company and hire more staff, the spokesman added.

About 1,000 engineers work for TikTok outside of China, with nearly half of them based in Mountain View, California.

Reuters has reported that ByteDance plans to invest billions of dollars and recruit hundreds of employees in Singapore, which it has selected as its South-east Asia headquarters. It is moving to a bigger office in One Raffles Quay.

Mr Trump said last month that a preliminary deal for Oracle and Walmart to take stakes in TikTok had his "blessing", but a formal deal has not materialised after ByteDance said it would not relinquish a majority stake in the app.

A judge will consider on Nov 4 whether the US government will be allowed to ban downloads of TikTok from US app stores.

REUTERS