AI acumen a must-have for tech jobs

China's artificial intelligence sector hiring is transitioning from model training and core research toward application development and business efficiency, as companies increasingly shift AI from laboratories into real-world operations, said a new industry report.

According to the latest data from Chinese career platform Maimai, AI application development roles accounted for around 61 percent of all new AI job postings in new economy sectors in the first seven months. That was well above the 24.55 percent share for foundational AI technology roles and 14.48 percent for positions focused on using AI to improve business efficiency.

New economy sectors involve business activities that leverage technologies such as the internet, big data, cloud computing and AI to create new products, new business forms and new business models.

The same trend is mirrored in roles closest to real-world deployment. Positions for forward-deployed engineers — who focus on bringing AI systems into real operating environments — surged 1,523 percent year-on-year, the report said. Agent-development jobs rose 436 percent, while AI product-manager postings increased 121 percent, the fastest growth among non-technical AI positions tracked by the report.

An earlier study published this month in the journal Technology in Society — based on more than 1 million AI-related job postings in China from 2018 to 2025 — also found that AI recruitment had become more specialized and engineering-oriented, while the spread of generative AI was accompanied by rising demand for deployment skills.

In related data, IT research firm Gartner's latest China survey also pointed to concrete progress, showing that 16 percent of polled companies had already embedded AI agents as final deliverables in some products or services.

"Most companies now have limited need for foundational AI talent commanding 10-million-yuan-level ($1.49 million) annual salaries," said Lin Fan, founder and CEO of Maimai.

"What most companies need are people who can build agent applications and integrate them into business workflows," Lin said, adding that companies should not think of AI talent simply as researchers working on the underlying technologies of large language models.

While larger companies still dominate AI recruitment, demand is spreading rapidly to smaller businesses, the report showed. Companies with more than 10,000 employees accounted for 33.5 percent of new AI postings, while those with 1,000 to 10,000 employees contributed another 30.3 percent. Together, the two groups accounted for nearly two-thirds of new AI job openings.

Companies with fewer than 100 employees, however, recorded the fastest growth, with new AI postings jumping 1,041 percent year-on-year. They accounted for 11.86 percent of the total, showing that AI adoption is extending beyond large technology and platform companies.

The expansion comes amid a broader surge in AI recruitment. New AI job postings in Maimai's new economy sectors rose 789 percent year-on-year in the first seven months, with AI-related positions accounting for 32.62 percent of all new job openings.

Beyond dedicated AI positions, AI proficiency is increasingly becoming a basic workplace requirement. Maimai found that 34.1 percent of respondents said their employers had already introduced measures to assess or manage employees' AI capabilities. Some 23.7 percent said AI skills had become an explicit requirement for new hires, 22.6 percent said they had been incorporated into performance evaluations and 20.14 percent reported AI-related reassessments for job placement or transfers.

lijiaying@chinadaily.com.cn