He spent much of his career in the Chengdu Military Region Air Force, before being appointed Commander of the PLAAF Fuzhou Forward Headquarters in August 2005.

In 2011, he succeeded Xu Anxiang as Chief of Staff of the Nanjing Military Region Air Force.

[1][2] In February 2016, during Central Military Commission chairman Xi Jinping's military reform, Huang was appointed the Air Force Commander of the newly established PLA Eastern Theater Command.

He was one of the youngest lieutenant generals in the PLAAF, along with Ma Zhenjun and Zhang Yihu.

[4] In September 2014, Huang and a delegation of PLAAF officers visited Joint Base Pearl Harbor–Hickam in Hawaii, as part of a reciprocal visit to building a strong military to military relationship between the United States and China.