Tech interviews in China. World-class AI scene, but Mandarin and 996 are real.

Lighter for foreigners, and shaped by the work culture more than the law. Labour law exists, but the famously long hours (below) define the day-to-day far more than job protection does.

Notice is set by contract, commonly around one month, though it varies by employer and seniority. For a foreigner, the work permit and residence permit are tied to your employer, so any move means transferring or re-applying.

• Expect around one month's notice, depending on your contract.
• Your visa, work permit and residence permit are all tied to the employer.
• Plan a job change carefully, since the permits move with the job.

If you're looking while still employed, this matters even more. See how to interview while you're still employed.

Intense at many firms. The '996' model, roughly 9am to 9pm, six days a week, is famous, and although China's top court ruled it illegal in 2021, long hours are still common across big tech and AI startups. There are exceptions: DeepSeek, for one, runs a flat, lab-like culture closer to a research group than a 996 grind.

High. It's a fast, competitive market with a lot of movement, especially in the booming AI sector.

Interviews at the big firms and AI labs are technically demanding, with a strong algorithms focus. Expect a hard coding bar and system design.

• Heavy algorithms and data-structures rounds, often harder than the US bar.
• System design at senior level, plus a project deep-dive.
• Interviews may be in Mandarin, English, or both, confirm before you prep.

• Tier

  Big tech

  Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, Baidu, Huawei, Meituan, Pinduoduo, the giants, with the most foreigner-friendly roles at the largest firms.

• Tier

  AI labs

  DeepSeek and Alibaba's Qwen (Hangzhou), Moonshot and Z.ai (Beijing), MiniMax (Shanghai), one of the world's densest AI scenes.

• Tier

  Robotics & hardware

  Shenzhen, the global hub for robotics and physical AI.

China is one of the two global AI superpowers, and 2026 is a high point. DeepSeek's breakthrough models drew worldwide attention, Alibaba's Qwen, Moonshot's Kimi and ByteDance's Doubao are major players, and Shenzhen leads in robotics and physical AI. For ML and AI-systems engineers, it's one of the most active markets on earth.

For the shifts hitting every market this year, see what changed in tech interviews in 2026.

This is the big one. Most large-city tech firms use some English, and the most international roles sit at the biggest companies, but Mandarin is a major advantage and often expected, far more so than in Singapore, Dubai or India. It also raises your work-visa score. Realistically, plan to need at least working Mandarin to thrive.

Overwhelmingly local talent, and less set up for foreigners than the expat hubs. There's a real but smaller foreign-engineer community, concentrated at the big firms and international teams. The pull is the scale and the AI work, not the ease of landing.

Foreigners need three documents: a Z visa, a Foreigner's Work Permit, and a Residence Permit, all employer-sponsored. The work permit is points-based (Category A for top talent, Category B for most professionals), scoring salary, education, experience, age and Mandarin, with salary thresholds tied to the local average wage. It's more involved than the fast-track schemes elsewhere in Asia.

Interviewing in mainland China runs as a sequential gauntlet rather than a single onsite day. You clear one round, then wait for the next, so a loop can stretch past two months. A written test (bishi) often gates everything, then come two to four technical rounds (yi mian, er mian, san mian) plus an HR culture round. The algorithm bar is steep, mostly LeetCode medium and often harder than a FAANG screen. Interviewers drill deep on fundamentals like JVM internals, TCP, Redis, and MySQL locking, and probe past projects hard. Mandarin is expected for domestic roles, and long-hours expectations sit in the background.

How the loop actually runs shifts by employer. A few of China's best-known names:

These loops describe engineering hiring. Management and leadership candidates meet a similar local process but a different bar, so pair this page with the leadership interview prep hub and your role guide.

The role itself doesn't change at the border. A senior engineer is held to a senior engineer's bar wherever you are, so the substance of your prep comes from the role-by-role guides and the 2026 Tech Interview Report. This page is the local layer on top: pay in RMB, the right timeline, and a process that shifts with the company. It's also worth reading why strong candidates get rejected, since those mistakes travel everywhere. And wherever you interview, the prep that actually transfers is rehearsing out loud, so run a mock interview before the real one.

• 01Levels.fyi, Software Engineer, Chinatotal-compensation data for tier-1 cities.
• 02China work visa and work permit (2026)the Z visa, work permit and points system.
• 03China's '996' work modelthe long-hours culture and its spread.
• 04Tech interviews in China, Jincheng Lian engineer writeup on sequential rounds, fundamentals quizzes, and the LeetCode-medium bar.
• 05NodeFlair, ByteDance Software Engineer interview processOA plus three technical rounds plus HR, with difficulty.
• 06Tencent interview guide, techinterview.orgthe written-test gate, coding and system-design rounds, Mandarin expectation.
• 07Glassdoor, Meituan interview questionsround counts by level, coding every round.

Pay, notice, protection and visa details are sourced above. The notes on working culture, turnover and market trends reflect widely-reported conditions as of 2026, and are meant as a general read rather than precise figures.