Spring recruitment season highlights surging demand for talent in AI roles

As artificial intelligence continues to drive industrial change in China, data shows that AI has emerged as the most competitive talent battleground of this year's spring recruitment season, with companies racing to hire skilled professionals amid surging demand.

In the first two months of 2026, the number of AI-related job postings increased about twelvefold year-on-year, far exceeding the overall growth of the new economy sector. According to a report released recently by domestic recruitment platform Maimai, the share of AI-related positions among all new economy jobs jumped to 26.23 percent from 2.29 percent a year earlier.

The new economy sector refers to industries driven by technologies such as the internet, big data, cloud computing and AI, which give rise to new products, business models and formats.

Amid soaring demand, a shortage of talent is becoming increasingly evident. As of the end of February, high-performance computing engineers were among the scarcest, with a supply-demand ratio of 1:7, meaning there was only one qualified candidate against every seven vacant positions, the report showed.

Other roles, such as simultaneous localization and mapping, navigation algorithms, and cloud computing, are also facing a crisis of talent, it noted.

The growing popularity of OpenClaw's open-source AI agent has further fueled demand for roles related to AI applications. According to data from recruitment portal Zhaopin, the number of AI-related job postings surged 455 percent year-on-year in the first three weeks after the Spring Festival holiday.

Such roles offer highly competitive salaries. Maimai data shows that newly posted AI positions offer a monthly salary of 60,738 yuan ($8,837) on average, which is about 26 percent higher than the average salary in the new economy sector.

Experts said the surge in hiring reflects growing demand for talent as companies accelerate the commercialization of large models and expand AI applications across business scenarios.

Zhu Keli, founding director of the China Institute of New Economy, said, "Over the next five years, the job structure in the internet industry will show three major trends — AI-centered roles, vertically specialized scenarios and increasingly hybrid skill sets."

The job landscape will shift from a software-defined model to one featuring hardware-software integration and the convergence of the physical and digital worlds, Zhu said, noting that the job value will be more closely tied to the ability to implement technologies.

Against this backdrop, major technology companies have increased their recruitment efforts during the spring hiring season, with AI roles taking center stage, he added.

Earlier this month, Ant Group, which is affiliated with Alibaba, said that 85 percent of its openings are for technical roles, with more than 70 percent of those related to AI, covering areas such as large model algorithms and multimodal generation.

ByteDance announced its largest-ever internship program, with plans to recruit over 7,000 interns, more than 60 percent of whom will be placed in research and development roles centered around AI.

Meituan launched its recruitment program, which includes the year-round "Beidou Program", focusing on fields such as foundation models, AI applications, autonomous driving and intelligent decision-making.

New 'basic skills'

Mo Rong, chief expert at the Chinese Academy of Labor and Social Security, said that digital literacy and the ability to apply AI are becoming new "basic skills" and, therefore, workers "need to understand AI principles and make effective use of AI tools".

Lifelong learning and adaptability are becoming essential, as the shelf life of skills continues to shorten, making continuous upskilling a necessity, Mo added.

AI-related skills are rapidly becoming baseline requirements for job seekers, rather than added advantages. The Maimai report shows that 34.39 percent of newly posted positions explicitly require AI — or large model-related skills, a sharp increase from 22.35 percent a year earlier.

Job seekers are actively responding to this trend. Data from recruitment platform Liepin shows that in the first week after the Spring Festival holiday, resumes indicating proficiency in using AI tools surged 139.67 percent year-on-year.