Twitter's newly-appointed CEO Jack Dorsey is reportedly planning to trim his workforce with a wave of layoffs, Digital Spy reports.

The New York Times claims that the redundancies could be announced as soon as this week, with the social network's engineering department the hardest hit.

Word of the layoffs doesn't come as a huge surprise as previous reports suggest that Twitter is freezing the expansion of its San Francisco headquarters.

This follows a period of staggered user growth for Twitter, which has only added 50% more active users in the last two years, despite doubling its headcount.

Dorsey is exploring various ways of boosting Twitter's user base, including the introduction of a real-time events service called Moments.

Rumours also suggest that he is toying with the idea of scrapping the service's 140-character limit in a radical attempt to refresh the platform.