Why China’s AI Talent Shortage Drives Sky‑High Salaries in 2022

With rapid technological development, artificial intelligence has permeated daily life, making everything smarter and more convenient.

According to recent data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, China’s AI core industry now exceeds 400 billion CNY, a six‑fold increase since 2009, creating a talent demand far greater than supply and intensifying recruitment for core positions.

On August 17, Maimai released the "2022 AI Top Talent Data Atlas," revealing the latest changes in AI talent competition.

Demand Exceeds Supply, Talent Shortage

In AI’s main technical directions—speech recognition, natural language processing, deep learning, and computer vision—the supply‑demand ratios are 0.49, 0.49, 0.48 and 0.38 respectively, with computer‑vision talent being the most scarce.

Salaries are high: the minimum exceeds 30 000 CNY, while the maximum surpasses 60 000 CNY.

The top three positions by talent distribution are product manager, sales manager and project manager.

Geographically, 24% of AI talent is concentrated in Beijing, 16.53% in Hangzhou, 9.78% in Shanghai and 6.18% in Shenzhen.

The largest talent pools in the four technical areas belong to Huawei (computer vision), Baidu (deep learning), ByteDance (speech recognition) and Tencent (natural language processing).

High Entry Barriers and Salary Premiums

AI is an intellectual‑intensive industry. 62.7% of its talent hold bachelor’s degrees, 22.1% hold master’s degrees. Nearly 88% of algorithm engineers have master’s or higher, while most development engineers are bachelor‑educated.

Algorithm engineers have the highest turnover: average tenure 2.74 years, compared with 3.74 years for developers and 3.45 years for hardware engineers.

Over half of algorithm engineers change jobs within three years; only 32.3% stay 3‑5 years, and less than 10% remain over five years.

The AI industry is more friendly to employees over 35: 68.7% of developers have more than five years of experience, 22.1% have over ten years, while 67.9% of algorithm engineers are under five years old, with an average tenure of 4.59 years.

Average starting salaries are high: algorithm engineers average 32 208 CNY, development engineers about 32 000 CNY.

Algorithm Engineers Are the Hottest

Among the hardest‑to‑fill AI positions, seven are algorithm roles and three are engineering roles; visual algorithm engineers have the lowest supply‑demand ratio (0.08), meaning roughly 12.5 companies compete for one talent.

Most difficult positions are linked to autonomous driving, highlighting AI’s broad application in that field.

The most sought‑after role is decision‑planning algorithm engineer, while visual algorithm engineers are the most poached.

These insights come from Maimai’s 2022 AI Top Talent Data Atlas.