Photo taken on Oct. 26, 2020 shows the Tesla China-made Model 3 vehicles at its gigafactory in Shanghai, east China. Photo: Xinhua

Tesla has started recruiting employees for the data center it has set up in the Chinese mainland, the US electric carmaker announced via its employment WeChat account on Thursday.

Currently, it is recruiting employees for several job positions including senior software engineer, data safety specialist and data scientist. The jobs are located in Shanghai and Beijing.

Tesla said in the recruitment notice that it has established a data center in the Chinese mainland to achieve localization of data storage, and that it will "add more" of the facilities in the country in the future. 

Tesla's move to set up a China-based data center follows its recent pledge to keep any data it collects from locally sold cars within the country's borders. The company also said it would set up a platform where car owners can search for their vehicle information. 

Tesla cars have reportedly been banned from entering some military complexes in China due to the cameras installed on the vehicles. 

The company, although enjoying enormous success in China after launching two locally produced cars, has been facing turmoil recently amid doubts over safety and dissatisfying aftersales services. 

The criticism came to a head after a user climbed onto one of Tesla's cars on display at the Shanghai Auto Show to protest about quality problems. Tesla finally agreed to share vehicle data with the customer following pressure from Chinese regulators.