DeepSeek attracts China’s young jobseekers as AI firm ramps up recruitment

DeepSeek, China’s hottest tech start-up, has become one of the most coveted destinations for young jobseekers across the country, as the company ramps up recruitment of artificial intelligence (AI) talent.

Spots for dozens of jobs related to research and development in artificial general intelligence (AGI) have been opened by DeepSeek at its home base in Hangzhou, capital of eastern Zhejiang province, and in Beijing, according to the website of parent firm High-Flyer Quant and various Chinese recruitment sites.

AGI is software with humanlike intelligence and the ability to self-teach, performing tasks that it was not necessarily trained for.

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

The first working day after the Lunar New Year break already saw a few young jobseekers venture to DeepSeek’s headquarters, in the hope of getting employed or striking up potential partnerships.

“If I can meet with them, I want to ask if they have any idea to develop AI agents,” said Hangzhou resident Liu Yuanjie, a fresh graduate who studied automation.

Another jobseeker, surnamed Shen, said he drove for four days – from southwestern Sichuan province to Hangzhou – to apply for a job at DeepSeek, which he referred to as “the nation’s pride” because of its AI achievements. Shen said he would take any job at the firm, “whether as a cleaner or a driver”.

Landing a job at artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek has become the goal for a growing number of young tech talent in China. Photo: Shutterstock alt=Landing a job at artificial intelligence start-up DeepSeek has become the goal for a growing number of young tech talent in China. Photo: Shutterstock>

That enthusiasm from young Chinese jobseekers reflects the wide admiration for the start-up at home and abroad, following its recent release of two powerful new AI models, DeepSeek-V3 and DeepSeek-R1, that were built at a fraction of the cost and computing power that major tech companies muster to build large language models – the technology underpinning generative AI services like ChatGPT.

The AI industry’s buzz over DeepSeek appeared to reach a crescendo late last month when news spread that its namesake chatbot, integrated with the R1 reasoning model, seized the top spot among free-to-use apps on Apple‘s App Stores in the US and China.

On Wednesday, the Communist Party secretary of southern Guangdong province, Huang Kunming, commended DeepSeek for taking on US AI titans with “courage and vigour”. Huang, a member of the Politburo, is the first senior Chinese government official to publicly praise the start-up.

DeepSeek’s growing fame certainly helps its recruitment efforts amid challenges in China’s job market.

While the country’s booming AI industry appears to have a plethora of job openings, there is not enough talent to fill them, according to a report from Maimai, a Chinese professional online network similar to LinkedIn.

The role of “deep-learning researcher in AGI” at DeepSeek’s Beijing office currently offers a monthly salary of up to 100,000 yuan (US$13,909) for candidates with a master’s degree and papers published in world-class publications, with no previous work experience required, according to a job post on Chinese recruitment site Boss Zhipin.

For engineer positions in deep-learning systems, data research and so-called full-stack development, the company’s salary packages range from 700,000 yuan to 1.2 million yuan a year.

In the company’s various job posts, DeepSeek played up its capability in “top-tier graphics processing unit computing cluster” as a key advantage in luring fresh AI talent. It also promises more leeway for researchers to test viable ideas.

DeepSeek’s recruitment drive is expected to heat up the battle for young AI talent among China’s Big Tech firms.

Demand for natural-language-processing talent jumped 111 per cent year on year for the January-June period in 2024, according to a November report from Peking University and recruitment platform Zhilian Zhaopin. Demand for deep-learning talent, meanwhile, rose 61 per cent, according to the report.

DeepSeek credits the “young geniuses” on its development team for the company’s latest AI achievements. This team is made up almost exclusively of Chinese nationals from some of the country’s top schools, such as Tsinghua University and Peking University.

In an interview with Chinese online media outlet 36Kr in 2023, DeepSeek founder and chief executive Liang Wenfeng said most developers at DeepSeek were either fresh graduates, or those early in their AI career, in line with the company’s preference for ability over experience when recruiting new employees.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP’s Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

Copyright (c) 2025. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.