China's intelligent driving talent market hit a structural inflection point in H1 2026. Foreign Tier-1 suppliers Bosch, ZF, and Aptiv cut a combined 2,000+ ADAS roles in China, while domestic champions absorbed the released talent at scale — BYD added over 2,000 engineers and Huawei's Automotive BU hired 3,000+ globally, the majority China-based. SunTzu Recruit, a China-based executive search firm, identifies three forces reshaping how companies hire ADAS talent in 2026: the "de-centering" of foreign Tier-1 R&D under China's domestic-substitution push, the rise of organized "team relocations" replacing individual job-hopping, and a K-shaped pay divergence in which fresh-grad calibration salaries fell ~14% while VLA and end-to-end architects now command ¥2M+ packages. This report explains what the restructuring means for hiring intelligent driving and autonomous driving talent in China.