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DeepSeek's Massive Hiring Spree: 150 Roles Open as Scale Strains Backend

DeepSeek is making waves again, but this time it's not about a new model release. The company's harness team lead, Chui Tianyi, took to social media to announce a massive recruitment drive—150 open positions, to be exact. In his words, there are "many new directions, new systems, and new demands" that need tackling.

For a company that prides itself on a lean, high-caliber team, this is a significant move. It's also the second public expansion signal this year, following a similar call in June.

A Sharper Focus: Backend and Agent Elastic Computing

This round of hiring is more targeted than the previous one. Back in June, DeepSeek aimed to "double all departments," covering seven categories. Now, the focus is squarely on backend development engineers and agent elastic computing research engineers.

Chui Tianyi describes this as a long-term, large-scale investment. The sweet spot is engineers with 2 to 10 years of experience, but they're also open to fresh graduates and those with less experience. Exceptional candidates might even see age requirements relaxed. Most roles are based in Beijing, with some options in Hangzhou. He calls it "an unprecedented hiring demand for 150 HC."

Why the urgency? Scale. Data volumes, machine counts, container numbers, training tasks, evaluation tasks, agent environments, user traffic—everything is growing at breakneck speed. As Chui points out, "Any aspect in computer science will bring a significant increase in complexity when the scale increases." The existing backend systems might simply buckle under the weight of future demands. So, they need fresh hands to upgrade, maintain, and even rewrite core systems.

Expansion Continues, But Rankings Slip

The past three months have been a whirlwind for DeepSeek. After closing a $5 billion funding round in June, they launched a hiring spree, rolled out updates like V4-Flash and V4 Pro, and even hiked API prices—in some cases by 11 times. Rumors are swirling about a massive deployment of Huawei Ascend 950DT chips in a new data center in Inner Mongolia, potentially one of the largest domestic AI chip clusters. Neither party has confirmed, though. On the financial front, market chatter suggests a second funding round is underway, aiming for 5 billion yuan at a pre-money valuation of around 500 billion, with ARR reportedly hitting $500 million.

On the user side, things look rosy. Quest Mobile data from June 2026 shows DeepSeek's monthly active users at 129 million, ranking third domestically behind Doubao (382 million) and Qianwen (167 million). But when it comes to intelligence benchmarks, there's a slight stumble. According to Artificial Analysis, DeepSeek scored 36 points, landing at 15th place. Domestic rivals Zhipu and Kimi are ahead at 7th and 9th, respectively.

So, while DeepSeek is scaling up its infrastructure and team, it faces stiff competition in the quality race. The coming months will reveal whether this aggressive expansion pays off.

Key Points:

  • DeepSeek's harness team is hiring 150 engineers, focusing on backend and agent elastic computing.
  • The move is driven by rapid growth in data, infrastructure, and user demands.
  • This follows a $5B funding round and precedes rumored second-round financing.
  • Despite strong user numbers, DeepSeek's model ranking has slipped to 15th globally.