Chinese AI firm Deep Seek launched a sweeping recruitment drive on Friday, saying many core teams will double in size as it shifts from pure research toward commercial products. The campaign lists roles from AI product managers to infrastructure engineers, signalling a broadening beyond its flagship R1 reasoning model toward industry‑specific applications and larger‑scale model training in the coming months.

Founder Liang Wenfeng argues the hires should favor young engineers rather than established researchers, aiming to build a full‑stack AI company. Openings target sectors such as law, medicine and languages, while infrastructure posts focus on AI clusters, distributed storage and networking. The push follows competition from Zhipu AI, Moonshot AI and ByteDance’s Doubao chatbot, which has eroded Deep Seek’s consumer share.

Deep Seek’s infrastructure expansion leans on a partnership with Huawei to optimise models for Ascend AI chips, reducing reliance on Nvidia hardware. The company recently released an Ascend‑optimised V4 model, underscoring engineering challenges of domestic chip adaptation. As it eyes outside funding, the hiring surge aims to retain talent amid poaching by larger rivals such as Xiaomi and ByteDance.