JD.com: Will Create Over 100,000 Robot Maintenance Engineer Jobs in the Next 5 Years

JD.com's official account "JD Logistics Bulletin Board" recently announced its latest employment plan, aiming to create over 100,000 robot maintenance engineer positions across the industry in the next five years, supplying a large number of mature technical talent to the automated operations track.

Coinciding with the 2026 World Robot Conference (WRC 2026), JD.com officially unveiled its new full-chain robot strategic layout. Beyond product iteration and deployment promotion, the core plan is to build a global robot after-sales maintenance service network covering more than 100 countries within five years, accompanied by a release of a ten-thousand-level technical employment gap.

Earlier, at the 2026 APEC Business Leaders' China Forum, JD.com founder and Chairman of the Board Liu Qiangdong publicly revealed for the first time that JD.com has internally launched an employee support program codenamed "Nirvana Plan." The core goal is to send JD.com's existing 700,000 frontline blue-collar workers, including couriers, in batches to officially partnered educational institutions for targeted technical training, proactively addressing the impact of rapid AI and automation deployment on traditional jobs.

In his public remarks, he candidly stated that the widespread adoption of robot delivery in terminal distribution scenarios is a definite industry trend, and point-to-point manual delivery demand will gradually narrow. However, JD.com will never allow its 700,000 frontline brothers who have worked with the company for years to suddenly face the predicament of losing their livelihoods and jobs.

To smoothly advance this company-wide job transition training program, JD.com has already signed agreements with 120 vocational schools nationwide as designated training bases. All frontline blue-collar employees will be sent to campuses in batches to complete systematic technical learning. After passing assessments and transitioning roles, they will be responsible for technical work such as routine maintenance, periodic servicing, and on-site operations of delivery robots.

Even the most technologically advanced intelligent robots, under long-term high-load operation, will inevitably experience malfunctions, and professional technical personnel are still needed to inspect and repair them on-site. Through such targeted job transition training, former blue-collar field workers who spent years on the road can be converted into certified technical staff. Subsequently, they can work at fixed indoor stations, no longer enduring the hardships of outdoor work in all weather conditions, and their income levels will also see significant improvement.

Liu Qiangdong emphasized that for tech companies holding cutting-edge technology, the ultimate goal of R&D has always been to make ordinary people's lives better and to make everyone's work experience more valuable—never to let cold technology deprive ordinary workers of their right to survival.