How to Apply to LONGi Green Energy

18 min read Last updated April 20, 2026 1 open positions
Blake Crosley
Blake Crosley Researched using publicly available information, hiring data, and ATS analysis.

Key Takeaways

  • LONGi Green Energy Technology (SHA: 601012) is the world's largest monocrystalline solar wafer manufacturer and a top-two global solar module manufacturer, headquartered in Xi'an with roughly 80,000 employees across manufacturing campuses in Ningxia, Yunnan, Jiangsu, Anhui, and Inner Mongolia plus international assembly in Vietnam and Malaysia.
  • Founded in 2000 by Li Zhenguo and named after Lanzhou University figure Jiang Longji, the company built its dominance on a single technology bet (monocrystalline silicon over multicrystalline) and is now making a second bet of the same magnitude on back-contact (BC / HPBC) cells in the flagship Hi-MO X10 module against competitor TOPCon (JinkoSolar, JA Solar) and HJT (Trina, Risen) architectures.
  • Market capitalization has fallen from a 2021 peak above 50 billion USD to roughly 5.5 billion USD in early 2026 amid an industrywide oversupply that crushed module ASPs to as low as 0.08-0.10 USD/watt, drove LONGi to its first annual loss in over a decade in 2024, and triggered widely reported workforce reductions of approximately 30% through layoffs, attrition, and plant idling.
  • Western trade actions including US Section 201 plus UFLPA, India's ALMM list, and the EU CBAM have effectively closed or restricted major export markets for direct China-origin modules, pushing LONGi to expand Vietnam and Malaysia assembly, pursue US JVs (Pelican Renewables in Ohio with Invenergy), and shift export emphasis toward MENA, LATAM, Africa, and the still-open European module market.
  • The hiring portal is custom and Mandarin-primary at longi.com/cn/careers, with a smaller English portal at en.longi.com/careers for international roles; there is no Workday, Greenhouse, or other Western ATS in front of mainland-China hiring, and applications are routed by job ID rather than by general profile.
  • Mandarin fluency at HSK 5 or above is a practical floor for any Xi'an, Yinchuan, Wuxi, Taizhou, Hefei, or Ordos-based role, with HSK 6 preferred for engineering and operations leadership; English-only candidates are essentially limited to overseas regional sales, designated international corporate roles, and the Vietnam/Malaysia manufacturing operations.
  • Engineering and R&D interviews are technically deep, conducted in Mandarin, and benchmark candidates against semiconductor and solar-industry competitors (TCL Zhonghuan, Tongwei, JinkoSolar, JA Solar, Trina, GCL, SMIC, YMTC); generalist hardware or energy backgrounds without monocrystalline silicon or solar-cell specificity rarely compete.
  • 996 hours and milestone-driven extended schedules during fab ramps, customer audits, and product launches are standard, and LONGi does not pretend to offer Western-style forty-hour work-life balance; candidates who require it typically filter themselves out during interviews.
  • Compensation for engineering roles in Xi'an is competitive with other Chinese solar and semiconductor manufacturers but materially below first-tier-city tech compensation; the trade-offs are technical depth, scale of impact (LONGi ships tens of gigawatts annually), and exposure to a strategically important Chinese industrial flagship rather than peak-cycle equity upside, which has compressed substantially.
  • The honest reason to join LONGi today is conviction in the BC technology bet, conviction that the solar oversupply will eventually clear and reward the surviving low-cost integrated manufacturers, and conviction that working in Xi'an at the world's largest monocrystalline solar wafer maker is a more interesting engineering career than working at a smaller competitor; the honest reasons to look elsewhere are the cycle, the layoff overhang, the 996 culture, and the geographic constraint of being based in central or western China at a manufacturing campus.

About LONGi Green Energy

LONGi Green Energy Technology Co., Ltd. (Shanghai Stock Exchange: 601012, full Chinese name 隆基绿能科技股份有限公司, formerly known as LONGi Green Energy and before that as Xi'an Longi Silicon Materials) is the world's largest manufacturer of monocrystalline solar wafers and, depending on the quarter, the world's number one or two solar module manufacturer by shipments. Headquartered in Xi'an, Shaanxi Province, in central China, the company was founded in 2000 by Li Zhenguo (李振国), a graduate of Lanzhou University whose surname provided the company name, and was named in honor of Mr. Jiang Longji, a Lanzhou University alumnus and former president of the school whose vision around photovoltaics shaped the founding team. LONGi today employs roughly 80,000 people across manufacturing campuses and R&D centers in Xi'an (HQ), Yinchuan in Ningxia, Lijiang and Baoshan in Yunnan (where cheap hydroelectric power feeds the most energy-intensive ingot-pulling step), Wuxi and Taizhou in Jiangsu, Hefei in Anhui, Ordos in Inner Mongolia, plus international module assembly in Vietnam, Malaysia, and (formerly) the United States via the Pelican Renewables joint venture in Pataskala, Ohio. With a market capitalization that has fallen from a 2021 peak above 5,000 billion RMB (approximately 50 billion USD at the time) to roughly 40 billion RMB (approximately 5.5 billion USD) as of early 2026, LONGi is simultaneously a global industrial champion, a national strategic asset for China's renewable-energy ambitions, and a company in the middle of the deepest downcycle the solar industry has ever experienced. The technical and strategic positioning of LONGi is what every serious candidate should understand before applying. The company built its dominance on a single bet: that monocrystalline silicon, not multicrystalline, would win the solar industry on cost-per-watt at the system level once polysilicon prices fell. That bet, made in the early 2010s when the industry was still split, was correct, and it took LONGi from a small Xi'an wafer house to the largest pure-play solar manufacturer in the world by 2018. The current bet is the same kind of long technology gamble: that back-contact (BC) cells, branded as HPBC (Hybrid Passivated Back Contact) and now HPBC 2.0 in the flagship Hi-MO X10 module, will displace TOPCon (which competitors JinkoSolar and JA Solar dominate) and HJT (which Risen Energy, Huasun, and Trina pursue) as the next mainstream cell architecture. BC cells move all electrical contacts to the rear of the cell, eliminating front-side gridline shading and lifting module efficiency above 24%, but the manufacturing process is materially more complex and capex-heavy than TOPCon. LONGi has bet roughly 25 GW of dedicated HPBC capacity on this thesis, and the next two to three years will determine whether BC becomes the industry standard or remains a premium niche. The second piece of context every candidate must internalize is the brutal industry environment. From 2023 through 2025, Chinese solar manufacturing capacity (cells, wafers, modules) expanded from roughly 600 GW to over 1,200 GW against global annual installations of perhaps 500-600 GW, producing a structural oversupply of roughly two-to-one that crushed module ASPs from above 0.20 USD/watt in early 2023 to as low as 0.08-0.10 USD/watt in 2024, well below most competitors' cash cost. LONGi reported a net loss of approximately 8.6 billion RMB in 2024, its first annual loss in over a decade, and continued losses into 2025 forced a workforce reduction widely reported in Chinese-language media at roughly 30% of headcount, taking the company from approximately 80,000 employees at the 2023 peak (some peak-period reports cite higher figures) down to current levels through layoffs, attrition freezes, plant idling, and the shutdown of older PERC capacity. At the same time, Western trade actions tightened the screws on export markets: the US Section 201 safeguard tariff plus Section 301 China tariffs plus the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) effectively closed the US market to direct China-origin modules; India's Approved List of Models and Manufacturers (ALMM) restricted procurement to Indian-origin equipment for utility tenders; and the EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) plus the proposed Net Zero Industry Act began imposing carbon and origin requirements on imports. LONGi's response has been to expand Southeast Asian (Vietnam, Malaysia) module assembly to qualify for non-China origin, to pursue US joint ventures (Pelican Renewables), and to shift export emphasis toward the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, and the still-open European module market, while doubling down on the BC technology pivot to compete on differentiation rather than pure price. Candidates considering LONGi today are joining a company that is at once a world-leading manufacturer with extraordinary engineering depth, a politically important Chinese industrial flagship, and an organization that has just spent two years cutting headcount, freezing hiring in many functions, and restructuring around the BC technology bet. None of those facts cancels the others; understanding all three is the price of admission to a serious application.

Application Process

  1. 1
    Identify the right hiring portal before doing anything else

    Identify the right hiring portal before doing anything else. LONGi's primary career portal for mainland China hiring is the corporate site at en.longi.com/careers (English) and longi.com/cn/careers (Chinese), and the live mainland-China postings are concentrated on the Chinese-language portal where a custom in-house ATS handles application intake, resume parsing, and interview scheduling. There is no Workday, Greenhouse, Lever, or other Western ATS in front of LONGi's mainland-China hiring; the portal is bespoke and Mandarin-primary.

  2. 2
    For experienced (社招 / shezhao) hires in mainland China, register an account on t

    For experienced (社招 / shezhao) hires in mainland China, register an account on the longi.com/cn/careers portal with a Chinese mobile number (verification SMS to non-Chinese numbers is unreliable), upload a Chinese-language resume (中文简历), and apply to specific job IDs rather than submitting a general profile; LONGi's HR routes resumes by req number, and unsolicited general profiles rarely surface to hiring managers.

  3. 3
    For new-graduate (校招 / xiaozhao) hiring, LONGi runs an annual fall campus-recrui

    For new-graduate (校招 / xiaozhao) hiring, LONGi runs an annual fall campus-recruitment cycle (typically September through December for the following July graduation) targeting top engineering universities including Xi'an Jiaotong University, Lanzhou University (the founders' alma mater), Tsinghua, Peking University, Zhejiang University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University; the campus track includes an online aptitude test, group interviews, and a final on-site round at one of the major manufacturing campuses with a signed three-party agreement (三方协议) at offer.

  4. 4
    For international roles (overseas sales, regional service, manufacturing in Viet

    For international roles (overseas sales, regional service, manufacturing in Vietnam and Malaysia, and select corporate functions), use the English-language portal at en.longi.com/careers, which lists a smaller set of regional positions; international hiring is delivered partly through the same custom ATS in English and partly through LinkedIn Recruiter outreach by regional HR partners based in Singapore (APAC), Munich (Europe), and previously Pataskala, Ohio (North America, status now uncertain after the JV restructuring).

  5. 5
    For US-based roles tied to the Pelican Renewables joint venture in Pataskala, Oh

    For US-based roles tied to the Pelican Renewables joint venture in Pataskala, Ohio (the 5 GW module assembly facility built in partnership with Invenergy), application routing has been through a separate JV portal rather than through LONGi corporate; verify the legal employer of record on the offer letter, because the JV employs separately from LONGi China and does not provide the same internal mobility back to Xi'an.

  6. 6
    Expect a multi-stage selection process for engineering and R&D roles in Xi'an or

    Expect a multi-stage selection process for engineering and R&D roles in Xi'an or Yinchuan: a Chinese-language phone screen with HR (typically thirty minutes covering motivation, language, and willingness to relocate), a technical interview with the hiring manager (often conducted in Mandarin even for nominally English-friendly roles), a panel interview with two or three senior engineers focused on solar physics, manufacturing process, or materials science depending on the role, and a final HR interview covering compensation, relocation, and start date; the full cycle typically runs four to eight weeks.

  7. 7
    For sales, BD, and overseas market roles, the funnel is typically shorter (three

    For sales, BD, and overseas market roles, the funnel is typically shorter (three to five rounds) but more focused on language capability (English plus a regional language: Spanish for LATAM, Arabic for MENA, German for DACH, Portuguese for Brazil, Japanese for Japan), prior solar industry experience or comparable B2B industrial sales experience, and willingness to spend extended periods at customer sites and trade shows including SNEC in Shanghai, Intersolar Europe, and RE+ in the US; expect compensation discussions to come earlier than in technical tracks because base-plus-commission structures are role-dependent.

  8. 8
    Be prepared for the possibility that a posting visible on the portal is on hold

    Be prepared for the possibility that a posting visible on the portal is on hold or in slow-walk mode given the 2024-2025 hiring freeze in many functions; LONGi has continued to hire selectively for BC-technology R&D, for overseas manufacturing in Vietnam and Malaysia, and for export sales in non-blocked markets, but corporate-function hiring (HR, marketing, internal IT) has been materially curtailed, so calibrate timeline expectations accordingly and do not over-index on a single posting.

Resume Tips for LONGi Green Energy

recommended

Submit a Chinese-language resume (中文简历) for any mainland-China role; LONGi's res

Submit a Chinese-language resume (中文简历) for any mainland-China role; LONGi's resume screening is performed in Mandarin by HR teams in Xi'an, and an English-only resume for a Xi'an or Yinchuan engineering position will be deprioritized regardless of technical fit. For international roles, submit both Chinese and English versions where possible.

recommended

Use the standard PRC resume format (one to two pages, photo in upper right, educ

Use the standard PRC resume format (one to two pages, photo in upper right, education and work history in reverse chronological order, dates in YYYY.MM format) rather than a Western chronological or functional resume; recruiters at large Chinese manufacturing companies expect this format and read it quickly, and deviation from the format reads as lack of cultural awareness rather than originality.

recommended

Quantify everything in solar-industry-relevant terms: cell efficiency improvemen

Quantify everything in solar-industry-relevant terms: cell efficiency improvements in absolute percentage points (e.g., 'raised average HPBC cell efficiency from 25.8% to 26.3%'), wafer thickness reductions in microns, polysilicon consumption per watt, throughput improvements per ingot puller, yield improvements at the module assembly line, defect-per-million reductions, capex per gigawatt for new fab projects, and ASP or margin movements you contributed to. Generic 'improved process efficiency' language reads as filler at LONGi.

recommended

For R&D and process-engineering roles, foreground specific exposure to monocryst

For R&D and process-engineering roles, foreground specific exposure to monocrystalline ingot growth (Czochralski / CZ pulling, recharging, hot-zone optimization), wire-saw wafering (diamond-wire technology, kerf reduction), cell processing (PERC, TOPCon, HPBC, HJT, perovskite tandems), module assembly (stringer technology, lamination, framing, junction boxes, glass-glass vs glass-backsheet), or reliability testing (PID, LID, LeTID, IEC 61215/61730 certification) and name the specific equipment vendors you have used (Applied Materials, Maxwell, Centrotherm, Schmid, MEYER BURGER, S.C. New Energy, JA Tech for diamond wire) because LONGi engineers benchmark candidates against vendor-specific tool experience.

recommended

For BC-cell-specific roles, demonstrate familiarity with the SunPower IBC herita

For BC-cell-specific roles, demonstrate familiarity with the SunPower IBC heritage that established back-contact as a viable architecture, the Maxeon spin-out, the patent landscape (LONGi has been involved in significant BC patent litigation including disputes with Maxeon), and the manufacturing differences that make BC harder to scale than TOPCon (laser patterning steps, dielectric passivation stack complexity, increased process step count, narrower yield windows). Showing you understand why BC is hard, not just why it is good, signals seriousness.

recommended

For overseas sales and BD roles, lead with country-specific market knowledge (cu

For overseas sales and BD roles, lead with country-specific market knowledge (cumulative installed PV capacity, pipeline of utility tenders, financing structures including PPAs and yieldcos, local content rules, customs and tariff exposure for Chinese-origin modules) for your target region; LONGi sales managers compete head-to-head with JinkoSolar, Trina, Canadian Solar, and JA Solar account teams on technical credibility as much as price, and a generic sales resume without market specificity does not compete.

recommended

State your Mandarin language level explicitly and honestly on the resume, includ

State your Mandarin language level explicitly and honestly on the resume, including HSK level (HSK 5 is the practical floor for Xi'an HQ corporate roles, HSK 6 is preferred for engineering and operations leadership) and any prior work history in mainland China; non-Chinese-speaking candidates are essentially limited to overseas regional roles and a small number of designated English-track headquarters positions, and overstating Mandarin in interviews is quickly exposed and ends the process.

recommended

Show stability and longevity rather than job-hopping; Chinese manufacturing empl

Show stability and longevity rather than job-hopping; Chinese manufacturing employers including LONGi value candidates who have spent three to five years at one or two solar or semiconductor companies (TCL Zhonghuan, Tongwei, JinkoSolar, JA Solar, Trina, GCL, SMIC, YMTC) over candidates with five short tenures, and brief one-line context for each transition (project completion, family relocation, plant closure) materially helps your screen.

recommended

Include any patents (Chinese 发明专利 or international filings), peer-reviewed publi

Include any patents (Chinese 发明专利 or international filings), peer-reviewed publications, or industry-conference presentations (PVSEC, EU PVSEC, SNEC, IEEE PVSC) in a dedicated section; in solar R&D specifically, patent count and named inventorship are part of how engineers are benchmarked internally at LONGi and across the industry, and a credible patent record materially raises your interview ceiling.

recommended

Be explicit about willingness to be based in Xi'an, Yinchuan, Lijiang, or other

Be explicit about willingness to be based in Xi'an, Yinchuan, Lijiang, or other manufacturing locations; the strongest engineering and operations roles are at the manufacturing campuses, not in any first-tier Chinese city, and candidates who require Beijing or Shanghai or Shenzhen as a base will find their realistic options at LONGi narrow quickly to a small set of corporate liaison and sales positions.

Interview Culture

LONGi interview culture is a recognizable hybrid of Chinese state-adjacent industrial formality and Silicon-Valley-style technical-depth interrogation, reflecting the company's identity as both a globally competitive technology leader and a Chinese manufacturing flagship with deep ties to the national renewable-energy strategy. Interviews for engineering and R&D roles are conducted primarily in Mandarin, even when the candidate is a returnee (海归) with strong English, because the working language at the Xi'an HQ, the Yinchuan ingot-pulling complex, the Wuxi cell fab, and the Hefei module assembly lines is unambiguously Mandarin and the hiring managers are evaluating whether you can run a meeting, write a technical review, and handle an escalation in Chinese with Chinese colleagues. Expect an HR phone screen first (thirty to forty-five minutes covering motivation, willingness to relocate, current compensation, and a basic competency check on your stated experience), followed by one or two technical interviews with the hiring engineer or manager (sixty to ninety minutes each, often involving whiteboard or shared-document problems on solar-cell physics, process flow design, statistical process control, or yield analysis depending on the role), a panel interview with two or three senior staff including at least one cross-functional reviewer, and a final round with HR for offer mechanics. For senior or director-level roles, expect an additional interview with a vice-president or general manager that focuses on strategic judgment, willingness to commit to multi-year projects, and cultural fit with the founder-driven engineering culture that Li Zhenguo and the senior leadership team have built over twenty-five years. The technical bar is genuinely high. LONGi engineering interviews probe first principles in solar-cell physics (recombination mechanisms, Auger and Shockley-Read-Hall, surface passivation, light trapping, parasitic absorption), manufacturing process control (gauge R&R, control charts, design of experiments, six sigma), and equipment-specific operating knowledge for whatever toolset the role involves. Generalist process engineers without specific monocrystalline silicon or solar-cell experience are rarely competitive against the deep bench of internal candidates and competitor-poached engineers. R&D interviews go further into the literature: candidates for HPBC and TOPCon process roles are routinely asked to discuss recent papers from groups including ISFH, Fraunhofer ISE, ANU, NREL, and CSEM, and to articulate a point of view on perovskite-silicon tandems, the BC-vs-TOPCon-vs-HJT trajectory over the next three to five years, and the implications of polysilicon and metallization-paste price movements for cell economics. Sales and BD interviews probe market knowledge, customer relationships, and the specific pricing and financing dynamics of your target region, with particular attention to whether you can talk credibly about EPC contractors, utility off-takers, financing structures, and bankability requirements that determine which modules a customer actually buys. Cultural fit at LONGi is more nuanced than the typical 'we work hard' framing suggests. The 996 schedule (nine in the morning to nine in the evening, six days a week) is widely associated with Chinese tech and was not invented by LONGi, but extended hours during product launches, fab ramp-ups, and major customer trade shows are standard, and candidates who explicitly need a forty-hour week tend to filter themselves out during the interview process. At the same time, LONGi is a manufacturing engineering culture rather than a software-startup culture, which means the rhythm of long hours is tied to specific milestones (a new fab acceptance, a cell efficiency target, a major OEM customer audit) rather than to perpetual emergency, and candidates who have worked at semiconductor fabs (SMIC, YMTC, TSMC) or at competitor solar manufacturers will find the cadence familiar. Hierarchy and respect for technical seniority are real, and disagreement with senior engineers is expressed indirectly and through evidence rather than directly in meetings; candidates from Western-startup or American-bigtech backgrounds sometimes underestimate this and read flat, evidence-driven discussion as deference when it is actually how serious technical disagreement is conducted at LONGi. Interviewers will also probe your view of the industry downturn, the layoff cycle, and your willingness to commit to a company that may continue to lose money for several quarters before BC scale and demand recovery restore profitability; rosy answers that ignore the downturn read as either uninformed or evasive, and the strongest candidates speak honestly about why they believe in LONGi's specific bets despite the current cycle.

What LONGi Green Energy Looks For

  • Deep, specific technical knowledge of monocrystalline silicon photovoltaics, including ingot growth (CZ pulling, recharging, hot-zone design), wafering (diamond wire, kerf, thickness reduction), cell processing for the architecture relevant to your role (HPBC for the strategic R&D track, TOPCon for benchmarking and competitive analysis, PERC for legacy line management, HJT and perovskite tandems for forward-looking research), and module assembly; generalist energy or hardware engineers without solar-specific depth are rarely competitive for technical roles.
  • Conviction and a defensible point of view on the BC-vs-TOPCon-vs-HJT technology trajectory, the competitive position of LONGi versus JinkoSolar, JA Solar, Trina Solar, Canadian Solar, and Tongwei, and the role of perovskite-silicon tandems over the next five to ten years; LONGi senior engineers and managers want to hire people who think about the technology landscape strategically, not just execute tasks.
  • Mandarin fluency at HSK 5 or above for any Xi'an, Yinchuan, Wuxi, Taizhou, Hefei, or Ordos-based role, with HSK 6 strongly preferred for engineering, R&D, operations, finance, and HR functions where the operating language is Chinese all day; English-only candidates are essentially limited to overseas regional sales and a small number of designated international corporate roles.
  • Willingness to be based at a manufacturing campus rather than in a first-tier city; Xi'an HQ is a tier-1.5 city with strong universities and rising tech presence but is not Beijing or Shanghai, and Yinchuan, Lijiang, and Ordos are smaller industrial cities where most engineering and operations work actually happens. Candidates who require first-tier-city placement narrow their realistic options at LONGi very quickly.
  • Demonstrated tolerance for and effectiveness in a high-intensity, milestone-driven manufacturing engineering environment with extended hours during fab ramps, customer audits, and product launches; LONGi does not pretend to offer Western-style work-life balance, and candidates who interview as though they expect a forty-hour week and uninterrupted weekends typically do not receive offers for engineering or operations roles.
  • Honest, evidence-based engagement with the current industry downturn, the company's 2024-2025 losses, the workforce reduction, and the strategic bets the company is making to navigate oversupply and Western trade restrictions; rosy or naive answers that ignore the downcycle read as uninformed, and candidates who articulate a clear-eyed view of why they want to join LONGi specifically at this moment in the cycle stand out positively.
  • For overseas roles, country-specific market knowledge and language capability (Spanish for LATAM, Arabic for MENA, German for DACH, Portuguese for Brazil, Japanese for Japan, Vietnamese or Bahasa for Southeast Asia manufacturing) plus a track record of selling into utility-scale, distributed generation, or commercial-and-industrial solar segments at a competitor or major EPC; generic international sales experience without solar industry specificity is rarely competitive.
  • Stability and stewardship rather than mercenary job-hopping; Chinese manufacturing employers value candidates who have committed three to five years to one or two prior solar or semiconductor employers over candidates with a string of one-year tenures, and the strongest interview narratives frame career moves as deliberate progression rather than escape from prior employers.
  • Patent and publication record for R&D roles, including named inventorship on Chinese 发明专利 or international filings related to solar-cell architecture, ingot growth, wafering, or module reliability, and peer-reviewed publications or major-conference presentations at PVSEC, EU PVSEC, IEEE PVSC, or SNEC technical sessions; in the solar R&D community specifically, this record is part of how candidates are benchmarked.
  • Cultural fit with a founder-driven, engineering-led, manufacturing-first organization where Li Zhenguo and the long-tenure senior leadership team set technical direction; LONGi is not a flat startup or a consensus-driven Western corporation, and candidates who frame themselves as collaborative technical contributors rather than transformational change agents tend to interview better.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the typical compensation range for an engineering role at LONGi in Xi'an?
Compensation varies by function, level, and degree, but as a general guide: a fresh master's-degree process engineer joining at the Xi'an HQ or a manufacturing campus typically earns in the 180,000-260,000 RMB total cash range in year one (base plus year-end bonus), a senior engineer with five to eight years of solar or semiconductor experience moves into the 350,000-550,000 RMB range, a manager or senior R&D scientist on the BC technology track can reach 700,000-1,200,000 RMB, and director-level technical leadership pushes above 1,500,000 RMB. These bands are competitive with Tongwei, JinkoSolar, JA Solar, and Trina for comparable roles but materially below Beijing or Shanghai first-tier tech compensation; equity participation, which provided peak-cycle upside in the 2020-2021 window, has compressed substantially with the share-price decline. Sales and overseas roles use different structures with base-plus-commission arrangements that vary materially by region.
How serious is the 2024-2025 layoff cycle and is LONGi still hiring?
The layoffs are real and have been widely reported in Chinese-language industry media, with cumulative reductions of approximately 30% of headcount across the 2024-2025 period through a combination of layoffs, attrition freezes, contractor non-renewals, and the idling of older PERC manufacturing capacity; this took the company from peak headcount above 80,000 in 2023 to current levels. LONGi continues to hire selectively, with the strongest demand in BC-technology R&D and process engineering at Xi'an and Yinchuan, in overseas manufacturing in Vietnam and Malaysia, and in export sales for non-blocked markets including MENA, LATAM, and Europe. Corporate-function hiring (HR, marketing, internal IT, general administration) has been materially curtailed. Treat any posting on the portal as worth applying to but calibrate timeline expectations: roles that would have closed in four weeks in 2022 may take three months or more in 2026, and some postings remain open at low priority for extended periods.
How important is Mandarin language proficiency for non-Chinese candidates?
Critically important for any role based in mainland China and especially for HQ engineering, R&D, finance, HR, and operations functions where the working language is unambiguously Mandarin all day. The practical floor is HSK 5 (sustained business conversation, technical reading, ability to participate in meetings) and HSK 6 is strongly preferred for engineering and operations leadership. Non-Mandarin-speaking candidates are essentially limited to overseas regional roles (sales, service, regional marketing) based in Singapore, Munich, Dubai, Sao Paulo, or similar regional hubs, to designated English-track corporate functions which are a small minority of total hiring, and to manufacturing leadership at the Vietnam and Malaysia plants where Mandarin remains useful but is not strictly required for all roles. Interview tests of stated Mandarin level are common and overstating proficiency is quickly exposed.
What is the difference between LONGi and competitors JinkoSolar, JA Solar, Trina Solar, and Tongwei from an employer perspective?
All five are large Chinese solar manufacturers competing for similar engineering talent, but their identities and bets differ in ways candidates should understand. JinkoSolar (NYSE: JKS, Shanghai listing) is headquartered in Shanghai, runs a horizontal integrated model, and has bet heavily on TOPCon as its mainstream architecture; JA Solar (Shanghai: 002459) is HQ in Beijing, also TOPCon-focused, and has historically had close ties to certain Chinese state-investment vehicles; Trina Solar (formerly NYSE delisted, returned to A-share Shanghai listing as 688599) is Changzhou-based and has pursued a mixed TOPCon-plus-HJT roadmap with a heavy distributed-generation focus; Tongwei Solar (parent: Shanghai 600438) is Chengdu-based, integrated upstream into polysilicon (the largest polysilicon producer globally), and competes on cost. LONGi's distinctive bets are monocrystalline integration from polysilicon through module, the BC technology pivot, and a Xi'an HQ with strong Lanzhou University and Xi'an Jiaotong University engineering pipelines. From a candidate perspective, the choice often comes down to geography (Shanghai vs Xi'an vs Changzhou vs Chengdu), technology preference (BC vs TOPCon vs HJT vs polysilicon-cost-plus), and view on which company is best positioned for the eventual industry recovery.
Are there meaningful career opportunities for Western or non-Chinese candidates at LONGi?
Yes, but they are concentrated in specific functions and locations rather than broadly available across the company. Realistic paths include: overseas regional sales and BD roles based in Singapore, Munich, Dubai, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Sydney, or other regional hubs where the operating language is English plus a regional language; manufacturing and operations leadership at the Vietnam (Bac Giang) and Malaysia (Kuching, Sarawak) module assembly plants where mixed-nationality teams operate in English plus local languages; designated English-track corporate roles at Xi'an HQ in functions like global IR, ESG and sustainability, international legal, IP strategy, and global communications, which are a small minority of total HQ hiring; and previously the Pelican Renewables JV in Pataskala, Ohio, though the post-2024 status of that JV and its hiring should be verified directly. Pure Xi'an HQ engineering and R&D roles for non-Mandarin speakers are rare and typically require either prior LONGi or competitor experience plus a clear track to Mandarin proficiency, or a returnee profile with demonstrated Chinese-language work history.
How does LONGi's BC (back-contact) technology compare to TOPCon and HJT, and why does this matter for candidates?
BC moves all electrical contacts to the rear of the cell, eliminating front-side gridline shading and lifting module efficiency above 24% in current production with a longer-term path toward 26% and beyond. TOPCon (Tunnel Oxide Passivated Contact, championed by JinkoSolar and JA Solar) uses front-side contacts with an ultrathin tunnel oxide and polysilicon passivating layer on the rear, achieving roughly 22-23% module efficiency with a much simpler manufacturing flow than BC. HJT (Heterojunction with intrinsic Thin layer, pursued by Trina, Risen, Huasun, and others) uses amorphous silicon passivation layers and achieves comparable efficiencies to TOPCon with a fundamentally different process. BC's advantages are higher absolute efficiency, better aesthetics for distributed and rooftop applications, and a longer technology runway; its disadvantages are materially higher manufacturing complexity, higher capex per gigawatt, narrower yield windows, and intellectual-property exposure to the historical SunPower/Maxeon BC patent estate. For candidates, this matters because LONGi has bet roughly 25 GW of dedicated HPBC capacity on BC as the next mainstream architecture, and the success or failure of that bet over the next two to three years will materially shape engineering hiring, R&D priorities, and overall company trajectory.
What is 996 culture really like at LONGi?
996 (nine in the morning to nine in the evening, six days a week) was popularized by Chinese tech companies and is now widely associated with the broader Chinese tech and manufacturing sector. At LONGi, the practical reality is that extended hours during specific milestones are normal: fab ramp-ups, new product launches like the Hi-MO X10, major OEM customer audits, end-of-quarter shipment pushes, and major trade shows including SNEC. Outside those windows, the cadence at most engineering functions is closer to nine-to-seven five-and-a-half days a week than literal 996, but the implicit expectation is that you will surge when surge is needed and that personal time is subordinated to project milestones. This is meaningfully different from Western-style forty-hour-week work-life balance and from the more formalized overtime regimes at Japanese or Korean manufacturers. Candidates who are uncomfortable with this rhythm are best served by being explicit about it in interviews; LONGi tends to filter rather than convert, and a misaligned hire on schedule expectations rarely lasts.
How should I think about the geographic placement at Xi'an or Yinchuan rather than a first-tier Chinese city?
Xi'an is a tier-1.5 city of roughly 13 million people, the historical capital of multiple Chinese dynasties, home to strong universities including Xi'an Jiaotong University and Northwestern Polytechnical University, and a rising hub for aerospace, semiconductors, and renewable energy. Cost of living is materially lower than Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, or Hangzhou; salaries are accordingly lower in nominal terms but real purchasing power for housing, schools, and family services compares favorably. Yinchuan in Ningxia is a much smaller city built around the LONGi ingot-pulling complex and adjacent industrial activity, and is closer in feel to a company town than to a major metro. Lijiang and Baoshan in Yunnan, where hydropower-fed ingot production sits, are remote tourist-and-industrial cities at altitude. Candidates accustomed to first-tier cities should test their tolerance for these placements by visiting before accepting; the engineering work is world-class and the campuses are well-built, but the surrounding context is meaningfully different from Shanghai or Shenzhen, and family considerations including spouse employment and international schools materially constrain who can credibly relocate.
What is the situation with the Pelican Renewables JV in Pataskala, Ohio, and is LONGi still hiring in the United States?
Pelican Renewables was the joint venture between LONGi and Invenergy to operate a 5 GW module assembly facility in Pataskala, Ohio, which began production to serve the US market under the Inflation Reduction Act manufacturing incentives. The JV's status has shifted multiple times in response to US Section 201 tariff actions, anti-circumvention rulings on Southeast Asian assembly, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act enforcement on Chinese-origin components, and the changing political environment around Chinese ownership of US energy manufacturing. As of early 2026, candidates considering US-based roles should verify the current operational and ownership status of the Pelican facility directly with the listed contact for any posting, confirm the legal employer of record on any offer letter (the JV employs separately from LONGi China and does not provide standard internal mobility back to Xi'an), and account for the possibility that the JV structure may be further restructured in response to ongoing US trade policy. Outside of the Pelican JV, LONGi's direct US hiring is limited and concentrated in regional sales and service roles.
How should I think about LONGi versus the broader downturn in Chinese solar manufacturing when deciding whether to apply?
The honest framing is that the entire Chinese solar manufacturing sector is in a structural downturn that began in 2023, intensified through 2024-2025, and is unlikely to fully clear until manufacturing capacity is rationalized and global demand grows back into the installed capacity base. LONGi, JinkoSolar, JA Solar, Trina, Tongwei, and Canadian Solar are all losing money or operating at minimal margins, all are reducing headcount in some functions, and all are betting on either next-generation cell technology, vertical integration, or geographic diversification to survive. LONGi's specific bets are BC technology leadership, monocrystalline scale, and overseas manufacturing footprint; competitors have made different bets on TOPCon scale, polysilicon integration, or distributed-generation channel. Candidates who believe the industry will eventually consolidate around a smaller number of larger integrated players and who view BC as the most likely winning architecture should view LONGi favorably; candidates who are uncertain about the cycle, the technology trajectory, or the geographic placement may legitimately conclude that other employers (semiconductors, broader energy infrastructure, EVs) offer better risk-adjusted opportunities right now. There is no shame in either conclusion; what matters is making the decision with the actual facts of the cycle in view.

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Sources

  1. LONGi Green Energy Technology Co., Ltd. — Corporate Site (English) —
  2. LONGi Careers Portal (English) —
  3. LONGi Careers Portal (Chinese, mainland China hiring) —
  4. LONGi Green Energy — Wikipedia overview, history, and BC technology —
  5. Shanghai Stock Exchange listing — LONGi Green Energy (601012) —
  6. LONGi Hi-MO X10 product overview (HPBC 2.0 flagship module) —
  7. US Section 201 Solar Safeguard — Office of the US Trade Representative —
  8. Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) — US Customs and Border Protection —
  9. EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) — European Commission —
  10. India Approved List of Models and Manufacturers (ALMM) — Ministry of New and Renewable Energy —