Tech giants eyeing pole position in unmanned driving

Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings Ltd has joined the race, along with rivals such as Baidu Inc and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, to recruit senior autonomous driving engineers in Silicon Valley.

The Shenzhen, Guangdong province-based company, owner of popular social media app WeChat, is building an autonomous driving research team based in Palo Alto, California, according to job postings on LinkedIn.

"Expert/senior researchers" who "have a strong interest in developing cutting-edge technologies are being recruited. The technologies include simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) and localization, machine learning, motion planning, perception and sensor fusion, and behavior prediction," according to a posting on the online job board last month.