36Kr has learned that Dreame is recruiting for its 2025 fall intake. Most roles are in R&D and sales, centered at its Suzhou headquarters, with additional positions in Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Beijing.
Founded in 2017, Dreame built its business on high-speed digital motors, smart algorithms, and motion control technologies. It positions itself as a global premium consumer electronics and smart manufacturing company. Today, Dreame has more than 11 million members across its channels and has served over 30 million households worldwide.
This year has been especially active. Six months after debuting large appliances such as air conditioners and refrigerators at AWE 2025, Dreame introduced televisions, water purifiers, and washer-dryer combos. At the same time, announcements of moves into automotive, smartphones, and astronomy drew wide market attention.
The workforce has also grown rapidly. From fewer than 20 employees in 2017, Dreame now employs more than 20,000 people worldwide, including factory staff. It has reached in eight years what many in the industry take a decade to achieve.
With this growth has come scrutiny. In 2025, headline moments included Dreame’s music festival in March; founder Yu Hao’s decision in August to provide critical illness insurance for all employees and their families; the company’s entry into the automotive sector later that month; and the September unveiling of its astronomy business unit.
Meanwhile, Dreame’s core market is shifting. The global robot vacuum sector has moved from years of rapid expansion into a phase of stock competition. Household demand has plateaued, and cleaning appliance penetration in China stands at just 6.9%. Competing technologies are increasingly similar, while price competition intensifies.
Industry consolidation is underway. Leading players are expanding into large appliances, with Dreame, Ecovacs Robotics, and Roborock all adding manufacturing capacity in Vietnam and Thailand.
For Dreame, talent remains central to sustaining its next stage of growth.
Two faces of rapid growth
In 2022, he left a traditional consulting firm to join the company, attracted by its momentum and career opportunities. He began as a campus recruitment manager, overseeing graduate hiring. Finding Dreame’s recruitment system still immature, Lu applied lessons from consulting work with multinational firms known for training future managers. His initial focus was on leading domestic institutions such as Tsinghua and Peking University.
Last year, Lu’s team expanded abroad, connecting with students at Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard, and other top universities. Dreame has consistently emphasized young talent, and this global approach not only broadened recruitment beyond China’s C9 League and tech innovators but also built brand awareness overseas.
At Dreame, rapid promotion for young employees is common. In his three years, Lu has seen graduates take on project leadership within months, and mid-career hires advance to team leadership in half a year.
Another human resource staff member told 36Kr that most senior managers rose from frontline roles, with core leadership largely in their 30s and 40s.
Each year, a significant share of promotions goes to younger employees. Lu recalled that in consulting, his peers were mostly veterans from Fortune 500 firms. At Dreame, where many colleagues were born after 1995, the atmosphere feels more dynamic.
He believes the company suits professionals who embrace change. “A fast-growing company naturally generates new horizontal roles,” he said. These roles arise from expansion, not top-down design. Younger employees, in his view, are more adaptable to uncertainty and more open to experimentation—traits that help them stand out.
To support this, Dreame maintains a flat management style. Outcomes matter more than titles, and even senior executives work without honorifics. The culture encourages open dialogue and collaborative problem-solving, minimizing hierarchy.
But frequent organizational changes have also drawn criticism: high turnover, HR strain, and weak candidate experiences. Lu offers an insider’s perspective.
He describes Dreame’s approach as “first create, then refine, then perfect.” Unlike firms that aim for flawless execution from the start, Dreame prioritizes speed. New business lines launch quickly, with the closest qualified employee stepping into the role—even if an engineer today becomes a technical lead tomorrow. For employees, this creates opportunity.
Promotions and pay are tied to results. In HR, for example, 80–90% of the team hold business partner roles that extend beyond recruitment. Departments sometimes compete for the same candidates, but the system strips out politics and favoritism, emphasizing ability.
“Internally, we joke that it’s like the Three Kingdoms era. Anyone can rally a team to fight a battle. If you have the dream, we have the stage,” Lu said. For those who thrive in competitive, fast-changing environments, Dreame offers rapid advancement.
Let professionals do professional work
Dreame’s founder is central to the company’s story. A Tsinghua scholar and inventor of the tri-rotor drone, Yu remains a figure of fascination.
Employees describe him as fast-paced, quick-talking, and diligent. He openly shares his strategic thinking across business units, including in company-wide group chats. Monthly management meetings are open to all employees, reflecting his emphasis on transparency. For HR’s Lu, this openness is a valuable learning channel, though it also fuels speculation inside the company.
Meng Jia, president of Dreame’s robot vacuum division, said the company uses a four-quadrant framework to assess competition. Strong mainstream rivals require a “surround and surpass” strategy, while smaller, innovative players bring features and scenarios Dreame can adapt for its high-end product lines. In practice: learn, adapt, then innovate.
Before developing any new product, Dreame’s R&D team maps competitors using this model to ensure every screw and line of code has a clear direction.
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Some question whether Dreame can thrive without Yu’s leadership, but Meng is confident: “Our innovation mechanism comes from organizational capability.”
He joined six years ago as an expert hire, drawn by the company’s entrepreneurial spirit. “Everyone was passionate about their work. When I saw that, I knew success was possible.”
A turning point came in 2023, when Dreame’s X20 robot vacuum received 100,000 orders in a single month, triple the production line’s capacity. Meng recalls scrambling with his team to design molds and secure additional production. Despite the chaos, he now laughs at the memory: “Suppliers and sales teams crowded me, saying not to leave until I gave them more units. That experience showed me the true value of our collective effort.”
For Meng, sustainable growth depends on professionalism. From the start, Dreame insisted on hiring department heads with deep expertise. Today, he considers core technologies, R&D, and patents to be the company’s strongest assets. As of March 31, Dreame had filed 6,379 patents globally, with 3,155 granted—a number he expects will continue to rise.
The following transcript has been edited and consolidated for brevity and clarity.
Inside Dreame
36Kr: How do you respond to claims that Dreame has high employee turnover?
Li Chao (LC): We’ve compared perception with actual data. Over the past year, overall attrition was in line with the industry average, and slightly lower for core roles. For a fast-growing company, talent mobility is normal. Dreame is simply under more public attention, so individual cases are amplified.
36Kr: How do you ensure R&D delivers products users truly need?
Meng Jia (MJ): Many companies struggle with disconnect between sales and R&D. Sales departments tend to complain about unmet needs, while R&D teams accuse them of chasing false demand.
Our solution is joint research. Product managers, R&D, and marketing all go to the market together. Sales staff are responsible for gathering on-the-ground feedback, and R&D teams must join them at retail stores and user events to observe, hear, and even disassemble products firsthand.
I personally tour global channels twice a year to bring raw customer feedback back to the lab. Only when all three teams confirm a pain point and solution in the same scenario does it enter the project pipeline. That way, the sales department isn’t blamed for distortion, and the R&D team avoids pseudo-innovation. Instead of clashing, the teams fight on the same side.
36Kr: What unique benefits does Dreame offer employees?
MJ: Beyond bonuses and promotions, we emphasize a human touch. Things like summer drinks, company concerts, and holiday gifts go through multiple rounds of discussion. For example, I helped choose the materials and designs for this year’s company T-shirts.
36Kr: How does Dreame handle promotions for young employees?
LC: We follow a principle of growing through practice. Candidates for mid-level roles must first take on added responsibilities at the operational level. If they prove themselves, they enter a three- to six-month evaluation with KPIs and comprehensive assessments from colleagues, managers, and HR. It ends with a formal presentation before confirmation.
Currently, Dreame has no traditional rank structure. Promotions and rewards are tied strictly to results. A rigid hierarchy could slow decision-making, so we’ve prioritized speed and opportunity. Today, the organization is extremely flat, with only three or four layers between Yu Hao and frontline staff. We may add levels in the future, but for now, growth speaks louder than titles.
KrASIA Connection features translated and adapted content that was originally published by 36Kr. This article was written by Tian Mi and Chen Tong for 36Kr.