Bengaluru, Aug 5 (IANS): After a wave of layoffs due to Covid-19 disruptions, ride-hailing major Uber on Wednesday said it is recruiting 140 more engineers for its tech teams in Bengaluru and Hyderabad.

The engineers will build products in areas such as rider and driver growth, delivery, marketplace, customer service, digital payments, risk and compliance, safety, and finance technology, Uber said in a statement.

The announcement came after Uber recently hired Jayaram Valliyur as senior director to lead its global finance technology team, spread across multiple geographies.

Prior to Uber, Valliyur worked for Amazon for 14 years, where he was responsible for scaling its India development centre.

He also led teams in charge of transportation, new seller registration and identity verification.

"We're leveraging India's outstanding product and engineering talent to fuel our next wave of products and services," Jayaram said on Uber's tech hiring drive.

"We're looking to hire engineers who're deeply technical and passionate about solving complex problems in the mobility and delivery space.''

Uber India had in May announced its decision to lay off around 600 full-time employees due to the impact of the coronavirus crisis.

Globally, Uber reportedly reduced its workforce by nearly 6,700 people amid Covid-19 and decided to cut investment in non-core projects.

Such had been the impact of the pandemic on the ride-hailing major that it reportedly decided to shut 45 offices globally, including one in Mumbai, resulting in job loss for many.

Recently, Uber's tech teams have been heavily invested in building mask recognition capabilities to ensure that driver partners wear masks for their own safety as well as that of riders.

To enable more effective social distancing measures, Uber's engineers have been accelerating digital payments and also use advanced Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to seamlessly onboard restaurant menus onto Uber marketplace, the company said.