UBTech, a Chinese humanoid robotics company headquartered in Shenzhen, is offering a global recruitment opportunity for the position of Chief Scientist of Embodied Intelligence, with a salary range of 15 million to 124 million yuan annually, equivalent to $2.2 million to $18 million. This role will involve setting the company’s complete technology roadmap and steering UBTech’s technical direction, as confirmed to China’s Global Times. Bloomberg noted that such compensation is unprecedented even in China, where the AI industry usually doesn’t match the high salaries seen in Silicon Valley.
Founded in 2012, UBTech became the first publicly listed humanoid robot maker, trading in Hong Kong, with its flagship product being the Walker S2, a 5-foot-9 humanoid robot intended for autonomous operation in factories. Earlier this year, the company partnered with Airbus to test Walker S2 units on aircraft manufacturing lines. In its financial results for 2025, released on March 31, UBTech reported a revenue increase of 53.3% year-on-year, amounting to 2.01 billion yuan. Revenue specifically from humanoid products and services was 820.6 million yuan, demonstrating a twenty-fold growth compared to the previous year.
The Chief Scientist position will focus on research in vision-language-action models, robotics foundation models, and capabilities in manipulation and dexterity, aiming to accelerate deployment across manufacturing, commercial services, and family companionship sectors. The compensation package includes cash, benefits, and equity. UBTech’s job posting calls for candidates regardless of nationality, age, or gender, asking, “Can you define the future?” This hiring initiative also seeks reinforcement learning algorithm engineers, hardware engineers, and EtherCAT master system developers.
This recruitment offer coincides with increasing support for China’s humanoid robot industry from the government. Premier Li Qiang has included robotics in the government work report for two consecutive years, and Chinese companies were responsible for nearly 90% of global humanoid robot shipments in 2025, according to research firm Omdia. UBTech sold 1,079 full-size humanoid robots last year, generating 820 million yuan. Meanwhile, Tesla announced job openings for over 80 specialists for its Optimus humanoid program, as the competition for AI talent expands into embodied intelligence.