Hire Developers in China

Want engineering capacity without outsourcing the whole project? Developers in China join your repo directly, build with AI agents like Claude Code, and report to your US leads at 50-70% below US salaries.

Hire Developer $0 cost until you hire

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4.9 on G2

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50–70%

payroll savings compared to U.S.

24hours

to get matched

92%

talent retention rate

Top 1%

AI-native talent

200+

teams building with us

Agent-ready talent at $103K a year less.

Vetted on agentic workflows and matched to your stack before you see a résumé.

Vetted

MandarinSimplified ChineseEnglishResponse Rating +2

Lin writes and reviews Mandarin training data in Simplified Chinese. She rates model answers for fluency and accuracy, and rewrites translated data so it reads natively.

Advanced English Full-time Ready

Lin Xiaoyu

Mandarin AI Trainer · 6+ Years

Working remotely at a US Healthtech

Hire Lin

Vetted

UnityUnreal Engine 5C#C++ +2

Tao is a dual-engine game developer with both Unity and Unreal mastery. He has shipped mobile and PC titles for global publishers from China, owning gameplay frameworks, content pipelines, and platform certification.

Advanced English Full-time Ready

Tao Sun

Dedicated Game Developer · 11+ Years

Working remotely at a US AI

Hire Tao

Vetted

Unreal Engine 5C++BlueprintsNiagara +2

Xinyi is an Unreal Engine 5 developer with deep AAA experience. She has shipped console and PC titles at Tencent and NetEase-tier studios, owning gameplay systems, animation programming, and tools work.

Advanced English Full-time Ready

Xinyi Zhou

Dedicated Unreal Engine Developer · 9+ Years

Working remotely at a US Healthtech

Hire Xinyi

Vetted

KubernetesTerraformAWSCI/CD +2

Xiao is a DevOps engineer specializing in cloud-native infrastructure and platform engineering. She has built and maintained production environments for large-scale tech companies, with deep expertise in container orchestration and observability.

Advanced English Full-time Ready

Xiao Li

Dedicated DevOps Engineer · 7+ Years

Working remotely at a US Fintech

Hire Xiao

Vetted

PythonApache SparkFlinkBigQuery +2

Yun is a data engineer with expertise in building real-time data pipelines and analytics platforms. She has designed data infrastructure for large-scale e-commerce and ad-tech companies processing billions of events daily.

Advanced English Full-time Ready

Yun Zhao

Dedicated Data Engineer · 9+ Years

Working remotely at a US Healthtech

Hire Yun

How to hire Developers with Second Talent

Hire in 3 steps, not 3 months.

Tell us what you are building

Share what to ship, automate or scale, plus your stack, budget and time zone.

Meet your shortlist in 24 hours

6–8 pre-vetted Developers who ship with Claude Code, Cursor and AI agents. Interview the ones you like.

Ship from week one

We handle contracts, payroll, compliance and equipment, so your Developer ships in the first week.

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Trusted by teams that ship fast

Founders and engineering leaders on hiring with Second Talent.

Second Talent played a key role in our tech expansion, quickly providing high-quality frontend talent that integrated seamlessly into our projects.

Their pre-vetted candidates, smooth onboarding process, and excellent support helped us build a strong, cost-effective team that drives our success.

Marco A.

Co-founder & CTO

Second Talent helped Beyond Cars (acquired by Carro) swiftly build a top-tier tech team in just a month, accelerating our platform's development and boosting productivity.

This success allowed us to expand into new markets, ultimately leading to our acquisition by a major automotive e-commerce company.

Garry Y.

Co-Founder (acquired by Carro)

Second Talent built our team of pre-vetted engineers who made our hiring decisions straightforward.

Once onboarded, our tech team saw a significant boost in productivity and development speed. Their excellent account management and responsive customer service also ensured smooth handling of all post-onboarding HR matters.

Jack N.

Director of IT (10,000+ employees)

Hire Developers by Specialization in China

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Guide to Hiring Developers in China

Everything you need to know about employment laws, payroll, and compliance when hiring developers in China.

China has the deepest engineering pool on earth and the most friction attached to using it. Both parts are worth understanding before you decide.

$919B

Software and IT services revenue, first five months of 2026

People employed in software development

464

EF English score, 86th of 123 countries

$4,500

Monthly starting point for a senior engineer through us

Scale, and an AI hiring surge

Software and IT services revenue reached about $919 billion in the first five months of 2026, up 10.3 percent year on year, across roughly eight million people in software development. The AI competition for engineers is intense: Tencent raised technical recruitment 36 percent in 2026, AI roles account for more than 60 percent of Alibaba's hiring and more than 90 percent of Baidu's campus intake. Beijing holds 19 of the country's top 50 AI companies, Shanghai 14, with Shenzhen and Guangzhou holding 10 between them.

English is the trade-off

China scored 464 in the 2025 EF English Proficiency Index, 86th of 123. Engineering talent is exceptional and English is genuinely a constraint for most of it. Teams that succeed here run written-first, keep specifications precise, and put a bilingual lead between the team and the business.

Employment costs vary by city, not nationally

Employer contributions run 30 to 35 percent including the housing fund and are set city by city, with the contribution base banded between 60 and 300 percent of the local average wage and reset every July. Since September 2025 any agreement to waive social insurance is void, and an employee can resign on that basis and claim severance. Budget from the city, never from a national average.

See what each role actually pays in the China developer rate card.

Sources: China Ministry of Industry and Information Technology software revenue data, 2026; EF English Proficiency Index 2025; Supreme People\'s Court Interpretation II, in force September 2025.

Working Hours

40 hours/week (8 hrs/day, 5 days). "996" culture exists but is non-compliant.

Overtime Pay

150% weekdays, 200% rest days, 300% statutory holidays. Max 36 hrs OT/month.

Probation Period

1 month (<1 yr contract), 2 months (1-3 yrs), 6 months (3+ yrs).

Leave Entitlements in China

Leave Type

Entitlement

Annual Leave

5 days (1-10 yrs), 10 days (10-20 yrs), 15 days (20+ yrs).

Sick Leave

3-24 months depending on tenure. Paid at 60-100% by region.

Maternity Leave

98 days nationally + provincial extensions (30-60 extra days common).

Paternity Leave

15-30 days depending on province.

Public Holidays

11 days (New Year, Spring Festival 3 days, Qingming, Labor Day, National Day 3 days).

Notice Period

30 days (written notice) or 1 month salary in lieu.

Severance Pay

1 month per year of service. Capped at 12 months (for high earners).

Payroll & Tax in China

Component

Details

Employer Contributions

~31% (pension 16%, medical 10%, unemployment 0.5%, housing 5-12%).

Employee Contributions

~23% (pension 8%, medical 2%, unemployment 0.5%, housing 5-12%).

Income Tax

Progressive 3%-45%. Monthly standard deduction: CNY 5,000.

Minimum Wage

Beijing: CNY 2,420/mo (~$335). Shanghai: CNY 2,690/mo (~$372). Varies by city.

13th Month / Bonus

Not mandatory. Year-end bonus standard (1-6 months in tech).

Senior Developer Salary

$4,500-$5,500/mo

Second Talent handles all of this for you

Payroll, taxes, social contributions, leave tracking, contracts, and compliance in China. You focus on building your product.

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Pricing

Hire vetted engineers from $23 USD/hr*

Per full-time engineer, with vetting, employment, equipment, a dedicated partner and a replacement guarantee included. No upfront fees: you pay only when you hire.

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*Starting price for a full-time engineer, billed monthly. Final rate depends on role, seniority and location.

Frequently Asked Questions

Answers to common questions.

How much does a senior engineer in China cost?

Senior software engineers in China range from $4,500–$5,500/month through Second Talent. Mid-level: $3,200–$4,200/mo. Staff/lead level: $6,000–$7,500/mo. 50-70% lower than equivalent US salaries.

Are your developers AI-native?

Yes. Every engineer passes a hands-on AI tooling check before their profile goes live, working in Claude Code, Cursor and Copilot. It sits alongside a timed technical assessment graded by two senior engineers and a 60-minute live peer interview, so the developers you meet ship with AI agents from week one without skipping the fundamentals.

Do I need to set up a Chinese entity to hire?

No. You can hire Chinese engineers as independent contractors, or use Second Talent's Employer of Record (EOR) service to handle payroll, contracts, taxes, and local labor compliance on your behalf.

What time zone do Chinese engineers work in?

China Standard Time is UTC+8 all year, so China runs 12 hours ahead of US Eastern while US daylight time lasts and 13 hours ahead in winter. Engineers typically use an overlap model: one or two daily meetings in the early-morning US window, with the rest of the day handled async in Slack, Notion and Linear.

What kinds of roles do Chinese engineers excel at?

Backend (Java, Go, Python, C++), AI/ML (TensorFlow, PyTorch), cloud and DevOps (AWS, GCP, Kubernetes), embedded/IoT (C++, Rust, RTOS), and high-scale distributed systems. China produces strong talent across all of these.

Should I outsource software development to China or hire dedicated engineers?

Outsourcing hands a project to a vendor's team. Hiring through Second Talent adds full-time engineers from China to your own team, employed through our employer of record in China, so you set their priorities and review their code directly. On our market rates, a mid-level full-stack developer in China costs $35 to $82 an hour, against $85 to $135 in the United States. Full-time engineers start from $23 USD/hr (billed monthly).

What do Chinese web and app developers earn?

On our rate cards, React developers in China earn ¥15K-¥95K/mo, iOS developers ¥15K-¥95K/mo, Android developers ¥15K-¥100K/mo and web developers ¥10K-¥100K+/mo. On our market rates, a mid-level mobile app developer in China charges $44 to $102 an hour and a React developer $36 to $85. See the China web developer rate card and our China cost guide.

Developers who ship with AI agents, matched in 24 hours.

Starts at $23/hour. $0 cost until you hire.

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