China is thriving artificial intelligence (AI) Business has an abundance of job openings but not enough talent to fill them, according to a recent report from Maimai, a Chinese online professional network similar to LinkedIn.
A quarter of the openings among the top 20 types of “new economy” jobs on Maimai this year through October were directly related to AI, the company revealed in a report published this week. Related positions include algorithm engineer, AI engineer, recommendation algorithm engineer, large language modeling (LLM) specialist, and natural language processing specialist.
Cloud computing remains the tightest market, with a supply-demand ratio of 0.27, or about four job openings for every qualified applicant. Search algorithms follow closely with a ratio of 0.39, or more than two openings for each candidate.
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AI has emerged as a bright spot in a bleak domestic job market in China's “new economy”, a term used to describe high-growth sectors such as information technology, healthcare and renewable energy.
In general, China's job market for the country's top brains remains tight with two job seekers vying for every opening. In the first 10 months of 2024, the ratio increased further to 2.06, indicating strong competition among those looking for work, especially in the new energy vehicle business, which climbed from 1.77 to 2.04, according to the report.
As business activity around next-generation AI has increased over the past two years, Chinese Big Tech companies have engaged in a bitter war for talent in the field. In one posting to the recruitment platform Liepin, a company offered an annual salary of up to 5 million yuan (US$686,000) for an LLM team leader based in Beijing.
At the e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holdingowner of the South China Morning Post, six of the top 10 positions with a supply ratio lower than 1 were related to AI, according to the report. At Xiaohongshua social network similar to Instagram, nine of these positions were in AI.
Across the tech industry in general, TikTok owner ByteDance created the most new jobs in the first 10 months of the year, followed by a Chinese food delivery giant Meituan and Xiaohongshu, found the report.
Alibaba was the fourth largest employer, followed by its fintech affiliate Ant Group and Tencent Holdings.
