The truth behind high salaries at grassland data centers: DeepSeek offers 30,000 yuan monthly for operations roles, while ordinary shift operators earn only five to six thousand.

Beating AI News Flash: Daily People interviewed a data center operations and maintenance engineer who has worked in Ulanqab, Inner Mongolia for 5 years. Local AI data centers are still under large-scale construction, but his company's hiring demand has dropped significantly: it hired several thousand people in 2025, but as of the interview in 2026, it had hired only 3 new employees.

This engineer, pseudonymously named Zhang Liwei, originally screwed bolts on an automobile factory assembly line. When he first switched careers, his internship monthly salary was only 2,000 yuan, and after graduation it rose to 4,500 yuan. After 5 years of job-hopping and promotions, he has now become an engineer earning more than 10,000 yuan per month.

In April this year, DeepSeek was recruiting senior data center operations and maintenance engineers and senior delivery managers in Ulanqab, with a monthly salary of 15,000 to 30,000 yuan, at 14 months' pay. But these are senior positions requiring extensive data center operations and project management experience. According to Zhang Liwei's observations, ordinary shift operators locally still earn only five to six thousand yuan per month, while assistant engineers can earn more than 10,000 yuan.

The threshold for entering the industry is also rising. In 2024, some data centers were still willing to hire newcomers without relevant professional backgrounds. By this year, some companies already require relevant majors and work experience, and entry-level shift positions have even imposed a 35-year-old age limit.

The job-seeking boom has even spawned a training class business. Zhang Liwei revealed that a former colleague he knows started an operations and maintenance training class, charging nearly 20,000 yuan per student and opening classes only after reaching 60 students. By this calculation, a single session generates nearly 1.2 million yuan in revenue. But the so-called internal referrals, at most, only help students secure one interview opportunity.