Headhunters say China's major tech companies continue competing at high salaries for foundation-model and Agent talent

AT A GLANCE

Headhunters said that major tech companies are tightening hiring overall, but annual packages for some outstanding foundation-model new graduates have reached 2000000 to 5000000 yuan.

Article

Major tech companies AI Talent compensation inversion: top new graduates' annual packages soar to 5000000, while longer-serving employees at higher job levels earn less

Beating AI News reports that Leifeng.com interviewed multiple headhunters and found that China's major internet companies are tightening hiring quotas, yet remain willing to break compensation limits for top AI talent. Headhunters revealed that this year, annual packages for some outstanding new graduates in foundation-model fields have reached the 2000000 yuan level. ByteDance Seed and Xiaohongshu's top-tier offers have even reached 4000000 to 5000000 yuan, while Baidu's range is 2000000 to 3000000 yuan.

The competition for talent through high pay is intensifying internal “compensation inversion” at major tech companies. An internet-industry professional said that some foundation-model employees, despite holding lower job levels, already earn more than colleagues at higher levels. Similar issues had already emerged in 2017. A senior engineer recalled that a returnee new graduate who joined 1 years later and was one job level lower nevertheless earned 10000 yuan more per month than he did. The team had 30 people and at one point lost about 10%each month.

However, high pay has not benefited all AI professionals. Headhunters said that application-side roles at major tech companies are shrinking, while foundation-model teams still lack people who can genuinely train large models.Coding Agent, model evaluation, pre-training data, and Agent infrastructure have become new priorities in the competition for talent. DeepSeek has also recently expanded hiring for backend development and Agent Infra engineers. By contrast,AI hiring momentum in areas such as search has declined.

The threshold for this hiring wave is rising. Companies look beyond academic credentials and papers, placing greater emphasis on whether candidates have actually trained large-scale models at leading teams. Compensation and responsibilities can be negotiated separately for genuinely scarce talent; ordinary AI job seekers, however, face increasingly intense competition.

Original link https://m.theblockbeats.info/flash/372506

Key points

After interviewing multiple headhunters, Leifeng.com said that China's major internet companies are tightening hiring quotas but remain willing to break compensation limits for top AI talent.
Headhunters revealed that annual packages for some outstanding new graduates in foundation-model fields have reached the 2000000 yuan level.
The article said that ByteDance Seed and Xiaohongshu's top-tier offers reach 4000000 to 5000000 yuan, while Baidu's offers range from 2000000 to 3000000 yuan.
An internet-industry professional said that some foundation-model employees, despite holding lower job levels, already earn more than colleagues at higher levels.
Headhunters said that application-side roles at major tech companies are shrinking, while foundation-model teams still lack people who can genuinely train large models.
The article said that Coding Agent, model evaluation, pre-training data, and Agent infrastructure have become new priorities in the competition for talent, and DeepSeek has recently also expanded hiring for backend development and Agent Infra engineers.
The article said that AI hiring momentum in areas such as search has declined.
The article said that companies look beyond academic credentials and papers, placing importance on whether candidates have actually trained large-scale models at leading teams.

AI-assisted interpretation

The following is analysis, separate from reported facts. Verify important claims independently.

This content describes AI a divergence in the hiring market: openings for general roles and application-side roles are declining, but scarce talent with large model training experience may still command very high offers. As a result, “pay inversion” may occur within the same company, where lower-level new hires earn more than senior employees.

Why it matters to readers

If the trends described in the article are accurate,AI opportunities in the talent market will become more concentrated in areas such as foundation-model training, model evaluation, pre-training data, and Agent infrastructure, and compensation gaps between different roles and hiring cohorts within companies may also become more pronounced.

Beginners should note that the high compensation figures apply only to the small number of outstanding or scarce talents referred to in the article and do not represent all AI roles' typical compensation. Experience actually training large-scale models is described as an important threshold.

Risks and unknowns

Compensation and recruitment information mainly comes from accounts by headhunters and industry practitioners; no official company documents were provided.
Unable to verify 4000000 to 5000000 yuan and similar quoted figures, including the specific positions, number of candidates, compensation structure, and actual fulfillment.
Unable to verify the specific number of positions and duration of hiring contraction or expansion in each area.

Headhunters say China's major tech companies continue competing at high salaries for foundation-model and Agent talent

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