TikTok is continuing to expand despite coming under attack from the Trump administration in the US.

The Chinese-owned firm has announced a tie-up with online retailer Shopify to help businesses create video ads to promote their products.

TikTok also plans to take on around 3,000 engineers over the next three years, a spokesman told the BBC.

“The Chinese-owned firm has announced a tie-up with online retailer ⁦@Shopify⁩ to help businesses create video ads to promote their products.
⁦@tiktok_us⁩ also plans to take on around 3,000 engineers over the next 3 years” ⁦@BBCWorld⁩ https://t.co/w6M0XrByYB

— Christina Ayiotis (@christinayiotis) October 28, 2020

The popular short-form video app is being forced to sell its US operations to an American company or face a ban.

TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance will hire the engineers mostly in Europe, Canada, the US and Singapore "to support our rapid global growth," it said.

It currently employs about 1,000 engineers outside of China, with nearly half of them based in California.

Last month, it emerged that ByteDance plans to invest billions of dollars and recruit hundreds of employees in Singapore, which has been selected as its South East Asia headquarters.

The Trump administration says Chinese-owned social media platforms such as TikTok and Tencent's WeChat pose a national security threat, claiming users' data can be accessed by the Chinese government.

Both companies have repeatedly denied these allegations.

Despite the US uncertainty, TikTok continues to push ahead with its hiring expansion plan and moves into e-commerce.