Tesla had 103 job openings with Semi in the title posted at its Sparks, Nevada, truck plant as of Oct. 16, according to Tesla’s careers site. The listings come three weeks after the plant started high-volume Semi production on Sept. 24.
The hiring is for a 1.7-million-square-foot factory designed to build 50,000 trucks a year, as fleets line up orders for a truck Tesla first showed in 2017. Tesla has not said how many Semis the plant is building now. Before the dedicated line opened, the Semi fleet numbered just under 200 pilot trucks, delivered to customers including DHL, PepsiCo and US Foods.
Drayage carrier IMC Logistics ordered 50 Semis this month, following WattEV’s 370-truck order in May. Tesla was also named lead manufacturer on a 2,500-truck order through the ZET SCALE alliance in September, though the alliance did not say how many of those trucks will be Semis.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk told analysts in July, “We have started production with the Tesla semi-truck.” The company’s second-quarter shareholder update said production was expected to begin later in the year.
Semi openings span assembly to dispatch
The Semi listings include quality technicians for stamping, body-in-white and powertrain; equipment maintenance technicians for general assembly and the drivetrain; and a CDL driver, a dispatcher and an endurance fleet driver.
Several are night-shift roles, including a battery production supervisor, associate production managers and stamping quality technicians. Tesla is also hiring construction staff for the Semi site, from a pipefitter to an electrical superintendent.
The Semi roles are part of a larger list: Tesla’s site showed 490 openings in Sparks, 301 of them in manufacturing. The company’s Sparks listings on Indeed include production roles on battery, Powerwall, drive unit and LFP cell lines.
Semi service and charging build out beyond Nevada
Another 66 Semi postings sit outside Sparks. In the U.S., Tesla is hiring Semi service managers, supervisors and technical instructors in 11 cities, including Laredo, Texas; Elizabeth, New Jersey; and Chicago.
On the charging side, Pilot and Tesla opened their first Megacharger site in Ellabell, Georgia, Oct. 8, with 12 more under construction.
Tesla is also hiring for the Semi in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Belgium and the U.K., where it is targeting customer deliveries by the end of 2027. Postings there include service technicians in Berlin, Düsseldorf and Lyon, France.
The first European trucks will come from Nevada. “We’ve got ample capacity to support our initial wave,” Dan Priestley, who leads the Semi program, said in a September keynote at IAA Transportation in Hannover, Germany.
Output figures remain undisclosed
Tesla’s third-quarter delivery report on Oct. 2 did not mention the Semi, and the company has not disclosed pricing. It reports quarterly results after the market closes Oct. 21.
Semi postings are down from the spring even as Tesla’s overall Nevada postings rose. Stocktwits counted 146 Semi roles among nearly 471 full-time Nevada jobs on Tesla’s site in April, though it did not say how it identified Semi roles. On Oct. 16, the site listed 103 Semi-titled roles and 537 full-time Nevada openings.
Priestley has also said “Tesla is not a heavy truck company yet,” FreightWaves reported in its coverage of the Sept. 24 inauguration.
Why it matters: Tesla is staffing a Nevada plant built for 50,000 trucks a year as IMC, WattEV and ZET SCALE orders arrive. It has not said how many Semis the plant builds today, and its Oct. 21 results are the next chance to find out.
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