2021 Chinese Programmer Salary Survey: City and Role Breakdown

In January 2021 a dataset of 352,948 programmers was collected, revealing a national average monthly salary of 14,915 CNY and a median of 12,500 CNY; 96 % of respondents earned between 3,500 CNY and 85,000 CNY.

City‑wise average salaries (in CNY) are shown below, with Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen leading the market and only these four cities exceeding the national average.

Rank

City

Average Salary

Minimum Salary

Median

Maximum Salary

Number of Recruitments

Percentage

1

Beijing

17870

5813

16500

45000

28076

8.79%

2

Shanghai

17369

5750

16500

45000

59712

18.70%

3

Shenzhen

17263

5750

15500

45000

51306

16.07%

Additional rows omitted for brevity

The data shows that while the top three cities enjoy the highest average wages, cities like Hangzhou experienced a salary decline, highlighting regional disparities and the limited reliability of a single national average figure.

Job‑function salary comparison (January 2021 vs. January 2020) is presented in the following table; many roles, especially in AI, Big Data, and cloud‑related fields, saw notable increases.

Function

2021 Jan

2020 Jan

ADAS

20243.0

18479

Android Developer

13211.0

15016

BI Engineer

NaN

14124

CAE

16435.0

14166

CTO

39624.0

30921

Cocos2d‑x Developer

13402.0

17327

DSP

17572.0

17704

ETL

13098.0

13782

GIS

12246.0

12969

Hadoop Engineer

16795.0

17170

Artificial Intelligence

20394.0

19750

Big Data

15909.0

17069

Blockchain Development

19633.0

20787

Data Scientist

30686.0

29646

Deep Learning Engineer

22606.0

21937

Machine Learning

20570.0

21563

Search Algorithm Engineer

44375.0

34290

Additional rows omitted for brevity

Overall, software engineers saw their average salaries rise from about 13,000 CNY to 14,000 CNY, while AI‑related positions experienced even larger jumps, suggesting that high‑skill, cutting‑edge fields continue to command premium compensation.

These findings can help professionals benchmark their earnings, guide career planning, and inform employers about competitive salary levels across cities and technology domains.