Demand for AI talent booms in 2025 spring recruitment season

With AI empowering thousands of industries, many employers in China are expanding recruitment for related positions during the ongoing 2025 spring recruitment season.

At job fairs across multiple regions, talents specializing in algorithm engineering and robot development have become highly sought-after by companies. In East China's Hangzhou, some 830 companies offered 21,000 positions half focusing on AI algorithm development and large model research were on offer at the city's first large-scale offline spring job fair, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

Chinese robotics firm Unitree has opened 10 positions, including AI algorithm engineer and robot motion control algorithm engineer at the job fair, with salaries of up to 70,000 yuan (roughly $9,613) a month, according to Xinhua.

At a large-scale spring job fair recently held in Guangzhou, South China's Guangdong Province, there was a strong demand for AI-related positions among the more than 50,000 job openings, the Guangzhou Daily reported. The state-owned enterprise Guangdong Rising Holdings Group plans to recruit 2,000 university graduates, with a strong focus on AI and robotics. Chinese automaker XPENG plans to hire 6,000 employees in 2025, covering areas including autonomous driving, smart cockpits and intelligent robotics.

According to CCTV News, during the 2025 spring hiring season, the number of job seekers in the AI industry has grown by 33.4 percent year-on-year, with posts for robot algorithm engineers and debugging engineers both seeing year-on-year growth rates of over 30 percent. Fifty two percent of robot algorithm engineer positions require a master's or doctoral degree, and 45 percent require more than three years of work experience, per CCTV.

In late February, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba opened more than 3,000 positions in its spring recruitment for 2,026 interns. With a greater focus on AI, related positions account for nearly 50 percent. At Alibaba Cloud, AI-related positions exceed 80 percent.

The higher demand for AI industry talent indicates that AI technology has moved from the laboratory to the industry, becoming the core infrastructure for digital transformation in companies, an expert told the Global Times on Monday.

"AI technology involves the entire process of research and development, production, and service, requiring a large number of algorithm talents," said Yang Ming, chief technology officer at Guangzhou Shirui Electronic Technology, which mainly produces AI products such as LCD display main control boards and interactive smart panels, as quoted by the People's Daily on Monday. Yang emphasized that "students with a solid foundation in mathematics and strong hands-on abilities, as long as they have some background in AI, are very welcome."

Far from just algorithm engineers, positions in AI hardware development are also gaining traction. The need for data scientists and engineers is also increasing with rising demand for high-performance AI accelerators, according to the People's Daily.

"The AI accelerator is a hardware designed to speed up the processing of AI tasks. It can quickly understand vast amounts of information and help devices like smartphones and computers efficiently accomplish tasks, such as image recognition, speech recognition and natural language processing," said Wang Xuhang, a PhD graduate from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, who is about to join Huawei to focus on developing AI accelerators, as quoted by the People's Daily on Monday.

User demand for AI technologies is growing exponentially, and the diversification of related jobs is giving graduates more choices in the job market, said Wang.

Wang Peng, an associate research fellow at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Wednesday that three types of professions will be highlighted in future AI industry: The core technical positions which include algorithm engineers and large model developers, the composite application positions which refer to AI product managers and solution architects, who need both technical and industry knowledge, and the ethics and security positions which are mainly AI ethics and security experts, who prevent data leaks and malicious attacks.

Wang pointed out that the talent gap is concentrated in the fields of fundamental research, such as AI chips and algorithm originality, and applied composites, such as "AI+healthcare" and "AI+manufacturing." Also, the demand for positions such as data annotators and AI trainers will continue to grow.

To capture future employment opportunities, Wang suggested to enhance cooperation between companies and universities on skills training and industry collaboration, and support the expansion of university enrollments and development of academic disciplines.

China's higher education system has introduced AI programs at over 500 universities, marking one of the fastest disciplinary expansions in its history, Xinhua reported. Leading Chinese universities such as Tsinghua University, Wuhan University, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University have announced plans to expand their enrollments in AI and related interdisciplinary fields to meet the growing demand for talent, per Xinhua.