Tesla Starts Hiring in Vietnam Ahead of Entry

Tesla has opened five jobs in Vietnam, and one of its recruiters says the company is “officially coming” to the country. “Tesla is officially coming to Vietnam – and we’re hiring,” wrote Ricky Ip, who recruits for Tesla in Asia-Pacific, on X on 28 October. “We are looking for passionate people to join us in Vietnam and help make that vision a reality,” he added, referring to Tesla’s mission “to build a world of amazing abundance”.

The roles are listed on Tesla’s Vietnam careers portal: a sales manager, a service manager, a purchasing manager, an HR business partner and a project developer for charging. Tesla itself has made no announcement and has given no prices, models or launch date.

What the job ads say

The ads describe the start of a local operation rather than a single showroom. The sales manager will report to a “Country Manager” and be responsible for “sales results, delivery execution and team development”, according to the listing. The ad talks about leading teams “across field retail and delivery locations”, and about campaigns to convert “our existing order backlog”. That is standard wording in Tesla’s sales job ads and does not mean Vietnamese buyers have placed orders. Candidates need at least five years of experience leading large teams in a retail or service business across several sites.

The charging role is the most telling. A project developer for charging is the kind of hire a carmaker makes when it plans to build its own charging network in a new market, although Tesla has not said what it intends to build.

Ip’s post came with a Tesla-branded “Build your career at Tesla Vietnam” graphic listing the five roles. It shows a sports car with fine print saying the vehicle is “for illustration purposes only”. Electrek identifies the car as the next-generation Roadster, a car TSN has looked at in detail.

Electrek reported that Tesla registered a local company, Tesla Motors Vietnam LLC, in Ho Chi Minh City on 11 September with about 77.7bn dong (roughly $3m) in charter capital and a licence to import and sell cars. Tesla did not comment on that registration.

Why Vietnam is a hard market to enter

Vietnam is VinFast’s home ground. According to Electrek, the local electric carmaker sold 177,697 cars in Vietnam in the first nine months of 2026, out of about 495,000 across the whole market. That is about 36% of all new cars, petrol models included. VinFast’s sister company V-Green runs the main charging network and plans to spend about $380m on 99 ultra-fast stations, Electrek says.

That makes the charging hire more than a detail. A Tesla buyer in Ho Chi Minh City or Hanoi would need somewhere to charge that is not owned by a rival group. VinFast also builds its cars in the country, while Tesla would almost certainly import, which puts it at a price disadvantage in a market where small, cheap EVs sell best.

There is one tailwind. Electrek notes that Vietnam has extended its registration-fee exemption for battery-electric cars to the end of 2030, and that it applies to imports. Tesla’s past moves in the region also suggest the gap between hiring and selling can be short. Electrek says it opened orders in Thailand about three months after a hiring push in 2022, and launched in the Philippines in early 2025 after hiring in September 2024.

The timing is notable. Tesla’s third-quarter profit fell 43%, and it has just dropped the Cybertruck for Australia and New Zealand. Adding a new Southeast Asian market is a cheap way to find volume. VinFast, meanwhile, is pushing the other way into the US, where Green SM has launched an all-electric VinFast taxi service in Los Angeles.

The next sign to watch is a Tesla Vietnam website with prices and an order button, which in other markets has been the first official confirmation.