Database software giant Oracle Corp. is launching a massive recruitment drive aimed at securing some of the country’s best young cloud computing talents.

The company said Monday it plans to hire 5,000 new cloud staff, including engineers, consultants, sales and support people to help run its growing cloud services offerings. Oracle said the new talent will enable to it “sustain momentum” in its cloud business, which it somewhat bullishly claims is the world’s “fastest growing.”

Oracle’s rivals might have something to say about that particular claim, but no one can deny that the database firm is intent on becoming a major player in the cloud. The company has already hired more than 2,650 cloud sales people this year alone, as part of a major restructuring of its sales organization launched in May that was described by one source as its “biggest for a decade.” In addition, Oracle has hired 1,500 cloud developers since the beginning of this year.

“Central to Oracle’s success is our empowered, inspired and engaged workforce,” said Joyce Westerdahl, Oracle’s executive vice president of human resources. “We’re hiring experienced sales and engineering professionals eager to contribute to Oracle’s cloud growth and champion our products.”

Besides experience, Westerdahl said Oracle is also going after younger blood. “We are also recruiting high-performing recent college graduates and offering them a world-class training program to prepare them for a career in the technology industry,” she said.

The hires come as Oracle continues its long transition from an on-premises business to cloud company. Oracle’s hardware-focused business has been in steady decline over the last three to four years, but the company has managed to offset this by accelerating the buildout of its cloud services offerings.

In recent months Oracle has launched a number of new cloud products, including a new version of its managed database platform that allows customers to host their deployments on dedicated bare-metal servers and a cloud-based version of its Exadata database hardware service.

Image: Håkan Dahlström/Flickr