The Truth About High Salaries at Grassland Data Centers: DeepSeek Offers 30,000 Yuan Monthly for Operations Staff, While Regular On-Duty Workers Earn Only 5,000 to 6,000 Yuan

Dongcha Beating AI News Flash: Daily People interviewed a data center operations engineer who has worked in Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia for five years. While local AI data centers are still under large-scale construction, recruitment demand at his company has dropped significantly: it hired thousands of people in 2025, but only three new hires as of the 2026 interview. The engineer, who uses the alias Zhang Liwei, originally worked on an auto factory assembly line. When he switched careers, his monthly internship salary was only 2,000 yuan, rising to 4,500 yuan after graduation. After five years of job changes and promotions, he now earns over 10,000 yuan per month. In April this year, DeepSeek recruited senior data center operations engineers and senior delivery managers in Ulanqab, offering monthly salaries of 15,000 to 30,000 yuan with 14 months of pay. These are senior roles requiring extensive experience in data center operations and project management. According to Zhang, local regular on-duty staff still only earn 5,000 to 6,000 yuan monthly, while assistant engineers can make over 10,000 yuan. The industry’s entry threshold is rising: in 2024, some data centers still hired new graduates without relevant professional backgrounds; this year, some companies require matching majors and work experience, and even impose a 35-year age limit for frontline on-duty positions. The job-seeking boom has spawned training course businesses. Zhang revealed a former colleague runs an operations training program, charging nearly 20,000 yuan per trainee, with classes only launching when 60 students enroll. Calculated this way, each course batch generates nearly 1.2 million yuan in revenue. However, the so-called internal referrals only help trainees secure at most one interview opportunity.