Annual salaries exceed one million, and salary increases reach 60%. Humanoid robot companies are frantically "scrambling for talent."

A war without gunpowder smoke is defining the competitive landscape of the next - generation humanoid robots. Companies are offering million - yuan annual salaries to recruit top algorithm experts, headhunters are still recommending candidates at 10 p.m., and a large number of intelligent driving elites are transitioning to this field.

In 2025, humanoid robots are no longer just the dazzling stars on the Spring Festival Gala stage. Instead, they are gradually entering specific scenarios. Large procurement orders are frequently placed in the industry. In September, Ubtech announced a procurement contract worth 250 million yuan. Before that, several enterprises such as Zhipu Robotics and Unitree Technology also received huge orders worth hundreds of millions of yuan.

Amid this upsurge, a silent war for talent is unfolding. On one hand, companies are vying for top - level scientists with million - yuan annual salaries; on the other hand, they are rushing to universities to recruit fresh graduates. Intelligent driving elites are making career transitions, and headhunters are constantly making hand - overs. Behind this are both the long - term pressure to explore industrial and service application scenarios and the adaptation to the industry's shift of focus from "demo - watching" to "mass - production - watching".

The current situation of "recruiting talents with high salaries" is due to two reasons. On one hand, the industry is experiencing explosive growth, and companies' demand for talents has skyrocketed. On the other hand, there is an objective lag in university education compared with the industry, resulting in a continuous shortage of talent supply.

Meanwhile, some companies have stated that they will never pay a premium for "embodied intelligence - related experience". They focus on market expansion and mass - production delivery, returning to the essence of "high - end manufacturing". Some professionals believe that humanoid robots have not yet found a "rigid demand", and significant progress in this field can only be seen in 5 - 10 years. There are even those who adhere to the "investment bubble theory" in the humanoid robot industry.

In the humanoid robot talent war, is it a high - salary bubble or a blue - ocean opportunity? Amid the hustle and bustle, we are trying to see the truth.

01 Recruiting Talents with a 60% Salary Increase

In August this year, after winning the 400 - meter final championship at the World Humanoid Robot Games, Wang Xingxing, the founder of Unitree Technology, issued a recruitment notice to the media: The Beijing branch has been established, and they are urgently recruiting people.

This is not the first time Wang Xingxing has publicly recruited. At an event in Shanghai in May, he also publicly stated that "Unitree Technology is extremely short of people in all positions."

It's not just leading players like Unitree Technology that are short of people. A report released by Zhaopin shows that from January to May this year, the recruitment demand for humanoid robots increased by more than four times year - on - year, and the number of job seekers also increased by 396% year - on - year. At the same time, the number of recruitment positions and job seekers in technical positions accounted for 62% and 71% respectively in the total, far exceeding production and sales positions, ranking first.

Although the industry is booming, it is not easy to recruit suitable people. Since university education focuses more on theory than practice and has difficulty in making forward - looking arrangements according to industry needs, the actual engineering abilities of graduates do not fully match the recruitment requirements. Moreover, the reserve of cross - border talents is limited, and there are very few people with relevant experience.

A senior headhunter in the industry revealed to BaoBian that it was not until 2023 that relatively stable recruitment demand emerged in the humanoid robot industry, but it was not enough to support a headhunter to specialize in this field. This year, a large number of humanoid robot companies have entered the recruitment market, and headhunters who used to focus on intelligent driving and other related fields have also transformed one after another. She admitted that she also took a big step into the robot market with this wave of opportunity.

This sudden boom was unexpected by everyone, and talents who had planned and laid out in this field in advance were extremely scarce. The headhunter said that in the first half of this year, candidates with only 2 - 3 years of relevant work experience in this industry could get a salary increase of more than 60%. The strong recruitment demand forced her to find time to talk to BaoBian after 10 p.m.

However, even with such generous treatment and strong application demand, many positions remained unfilled after being open for six months. Therefore, for humanoid robot companies, the only way is to continue to raise salaries.

The recruitment information of various companies confirms the above statement. In May, Unitree Technology released a recruitment notice stating that for the position of "Robot Control Algorithm Expert", candidates with only 3 - 5 years of experience and a bachelor's degree can get a monthly salary of 70K - 100K.

Currently, Unitree has posted 79 recruitment positions on BOSS Zhipin. The monthly salary of several algorithm positions reaches 40K - 70K, the same as at the beginning of the year. Compared with the 3 - 10 years of work experience requirements for other positions, the work experience required for those with embodied intelligence - related experience is only 1 - 3 years.

Meanwhile, companies such as Ubtech and Zhipu Robotics have also posted dozens to hundreds of positions, offering monthly salaries ranging from 30K to 100K for practitioners with different levels of experience.

From the recruitment requirements of many companies, we can see that for fresh graduates, companies mainly focus on students majoring in computer science, software engineering, mechatronics, etc. from 985/211 universities, valuing their theoretical foundation and learning ability. For senior technical personnel, companies have higher requirements for their project operation abilities.

Ubtech's job requirements for the "Motion Control Algorithm Expert" position state that candidates should "be proficient in robot kinematics and dynamics modeling methods", "be familiar with optimization control algorithms such as MPC and WBC, and robot gait generation methods based on ZMP/CP", and "have experience in developing one or more dynamics simulation software".

Unitree not only recruits talents with high salaries but also offers internal referral rewards to attract recommendations from peers. According to the official website, Unitree rewards successful internal referrals for social recruitment with 2,000 - 10,000 yuan and successful internal referrals for campus recruitment with 1,000 - 6,000 yuan. At the same time, it also offers additional rewards for special talents and industry - leading talents.

02 Different Needs of Large, Medium - Sized, and Start - up Companies

Since 2024, there have been continuous news of executives from technology companies and Internet giants leaving their jobs to enter the embodied intelligence track. Capital has also begun to flow into the humanoid robot industry.

According to Gaogong Industry Research, there were 45 financing events in this field in July and August, with a cumulative amount of nearly 12.5 billion yuan, and 43 of them occurred in China.

In the industry, there are leading players such as Unitree Technology and Ubtech, as well as many small - scale start - up companies. Due to different development stages, their strategies for recruiting talents also vary.

The above - mentioned headhunter in the industry said that due to limited funds, start - up companies generally cannot offer more competitive salary packages, usually 10% - 20% lower than large and medium - sized enterprises. However, because of their small scale and flat management structure, the interview process is relatively fast, usually only one or two rounds.

Moreover, due to insufficient staff and high order pressure, most employees are busy with project delivery and have little time to train new employees. Therefore, such companies tend to recruit talents with 1 - 3 years of experience and also welcome cross - border talents to make career transitions, with relatively low restrictions on hard conditions such as academic qualifications.

Medium - sized enterprises with a scale of 300 - 1,000 people mainly consider how to break through to occupy more market share. These companies usually focus on core talents who can bring breakthroughs to the company's technological development, hoping that they have team leadership abilities and can reach the level equivalent to Alibaba's P7 - P9. The recruitment of other positions is also carried out around specific business modules. Generally, a team is recruited for each new scenario to be explored.

Since core talents are at a high level and scattered, such companies usually entrust headhunters to assist in one - to - one recruitment to improve efficiency. In terms of the interview process, these companies have a relatively fixed rhythm, usually taking about a month to complete.

The interview process of large companies in the industry is generally longer, sometimes even taking three or four months. Their advantages in retaining talents are a perfect system, rich benefits, and strong job security. For employees, having the resume endorsement of a giant company is also an option for future job - hunting. Therefore, most fresh graduates choose large companies as the first stop of their careers.

In terms of the technical route, the humanoid robot field is generally divided into two categories: hardware and software. Companies focusing on hardware mainly deliver robot entities; those focusing on software generally focus on researching algorithms such as the embodied brain.

According to the headhunter's observation at the World Robot Conference, most humanoid robots still need to be manually controlled at present. The R & D cost of the embodied brain technology route is high, and the return is uncertain. Therefore, most companies mainly recruit for positions related to mechanical structure and testing. Only industry leaders or large companies with relevant technological accumulation will continuously recruit research talents related to the embodied brain.

It is worth noting that since the underlying technologies of the intelligent driving field and the humanoid robot industry are the same, and the technical stacks required by talents are also highly overlapping, talents in the intelligent driving field have also become the target of competition for humanoid robot companies.

The headhunter said that even in the past two months, although the salary increase in the humanoid robot industry has decreased compared with the previous 60% increase, it is still much higher than the 20 - 30% increase in the intelligent driving field.

On one hand, there is a highly competitive situation in the intelligent driving field; on the other hand, there is a brand - new blue - ocean market. Driven by the industry's prospects and salary packages, talents in the intelligent driving field are making career transitions one after another. For a while, the intelligent driving departments of various Internet giants and new energy vehicle manufacturers are sending out talents. Baidu Apollo, a leading company in the industry, is even called the "Whampoa Military Academy" in the humanoid robot field.

However, intelligent driving and robots face different hardware carriers, and talents need to adapt to hardware integration and physical interaction logic. In addition, for talents from Internet companies, there is a large gap between the product thinking in the Internet industry and the rules of the physical world of robots. These are the problems that cross - border talents need to face.

03 Staying Calm Amid the Hustle and Bustle: Returning to Manufacturing and Breaking into New Scenarios

Amid the frenzy, some industry insiders still remain calm.

The founder of a humanoid robot company in Beijing told BaoBian that the current market salary is significantly higher than it should be, and he will never pay an excessive premium for the so - called "embodied intelligence - related experience".

For this emerging humanoid robot industry, talents with "relevant experience" are very rare. Therefore, most companies choose to "recruit talents with high salaries".

In his opinion, cross - border talents often have a more optimistic view and greater enthusiasm for this industry. Different from other start - up companies, this company tries to train its own engineers through methods such as "mentoring".

Although limited by various factors, they have to give up recruiting experts with more relevant experience and accumulated abilities. However, the founder of the above - mentioned humanoid robot company believes that this has instead created their "youthful" advantage. Compared with experienced veterans, he prefers candidates with less experience, even fresh graduates.

Regarding the previously popular "investment bubble theory", the founder said that from the perspective of enterprise valuation, the valuation of domestic embodied intelligence - related enterprises is generally lower than that of their American counterparts, and there is still a long way to go before reaching the peak. Secondly, from the perspective of market prospects, the markets in many fields have not been developed, and the developed markets have not been fully explored. The humanoid robot industry is still in the "blue - ocean" stage.

A postgraduate from the Control College of a 985 university also said that the current application scenarios of humanoid robots are still concentrated in scientific research and performance and cannot be directly applied to "rigid demand" scenarios such as logistics, housekeeping, health care, and industrial manufacturing. To see significant progress, it will take 5 - 10 years.

At the same time, the postgraduate also believes that in some scenarios, a fully humanoid robot may not be the optimal solution. For operations on relatively flat terrain, adding mechanical wheels or tracks may be more stable than a bipedal humanoid robot.

For job seekers, when choosing a platform, they need to weigh their own advantage areas, the growth space of the industry and the enterprise, re - evaluate reasonable expectations, and use practical experience and project abilities to obtain an ideal salary. For enterprises, to seek development, they need to find their own position in the industry, return to the essence of "high - end manufacturing", and at the same time contribute to the "breakthrough of rigid demand" in the industry.

Following the trend of high salaries may not be sustainable. Only by deepening core capabilities can one survive the cycle.

This article is from the WeChat public account "BaoBian", author: Gao Ze, editor: Xing Yun. Republished by 36Kr with permission.