ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba offer close to 1 million yuan a year to hire forward deployed engineers
China's biggest tech companies are stepping up recruitment and training of FDEs, with annual pay approaching 1 million yuan (about US$150,000), SCMP reports. Maimai data shows China FDE job postings rose 1,523% year on year in the first seven months of 2026.
The South China Morning Post reports that ByteDance, Tencent and Alibaba are stepping up hiring and training of forward deployed engineers, the engineers who work directly with customers to build AI applications and fit them into business operations. Pay packages for these roles are approaching 1 million yuan a year (about US$150,000).
The report cites data from Maimai, a Chinese professional networking platform. FDE job postings in China rose 1,523% in the first seven months of 2026 compared with the same period in 2025, the fastest growth of any AI technical role in Maimai's report.
Why it matters for FDEs: the FDE boom is no longer just a US story driven by Palantir, OpenAI, Anthropic and AWS. China's largest platforms now compete for the same mix of engineering and customer-facing skills to get their AI models into commercial use. For engineers in or near the Chinese market, that means a new, well-paid career track. It also shows that demand for people who can take AI from pilot to production is now global.
Source: www.scmp.com