AI hiring leaderboard — which roles are growing?
Monthly ranking of AI hiring across 15 role families. Two views: top by volume (which roles have the most open AI positions) and top by growth (which roles are heating up month-over-month).
Anchor: 2026-07 (last full calendar month, vs prior month 2026-06). 3,506 AI hiring events in 2026-07 (WORLDWIDE) vs 3,183 in 2026-06.
Top by volume
Most-hired AI role families in the WORLDWIDE view. Ranked by event count.
| # | Role family | Events | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AI Software Engineer | 842 | +3% |
| 2 | Corporate Operations | 276 | +18% |
| 3 | AI Hardware / Silicon | 239 | +12% |
| 4 | AI Product Manager | 239 | -6% |
| 5 | Solutions Engineer | 196 | +37% |
| 6 | Account Executive | 193 | -8% |
| 7 | Generative AI | 176 | +36% |
| 8 | Solutions Architect | 160 | -10% |
| 9 | Research Scientist | 137 | +57% |
| 10 | Forward Deployed Engineer | 127 | +95% |
| 11 | Agentic AI | 117 | -10% |
| 12 | Applied Scientist | 105 | +59% |
| 13 | MLOps / AI Infrastructure | 103 | +21% |
| 14 | ML Engineer | 91 | -28% |
| 15 | AI Safety / Alignment | 78 | +11% |
Top by growth
Fastest-heating AI role families. New entrants (prior month = 0) sort to the top. Ranked by month-over-month change.
| # | Role family | Change | Events |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AI Operations / Annotation | +219% | 51 |
| 2 | Forward Deployed Engineer | +95% | 127 |
| 3 | Recommender / Personalization | +90% | 19 |
| 4 | Applied Scientist | +59% | 105 |
| 5 | Research Scientist | +57% | 137 |
| 6 | AI Designer | +45% | 32 |
| 7 | Solutions Engineer | +37% | 196 |
| 8 | Generative AI | +36% | 176 |
| 9 | AI Engineer | +24% | 68 |
| 10 | MLOps / AI Infrastructure | +21% | 103 |
| 11 | Robotics / Embodied AI | +19% | 50 |
| 12 | Corporate Operations | +18% | 276 |
| 13 | Computer Vision | +13% | 17 |
| 14 | Data Engineer (AI) | +12% | 36 |
| 15 | AI Hardware / Silicon | +12% | 239 |
Methodology
-
AI-only: events filtered to
ai_tierIN ('strong', 'medium') -- excludes weak/no-signal hiring entirely. - Monthly anchor: "current" = 2026-07 (last full calendar month), "prior" = 2026-06. Today's partial month is excluded so growth comparisons aren't biased by an incomplete denominator.
- Role bucketing: a keyword dictionary mapping titles to a bounded set of role families. Ordered priority: AI Safety beats generic engineer; ML Engineer beats generic software; back-office hires (Recruiting, Corporate Operations) captured honestly as AI-economy signal, not silenced.
- "Other AI" excluded from the leaderboard: a substantial minority of AI-tagged titles don't map to any defined bucket (one-off titles, unique role names). They count toward the total but don't appear as a leaderboard row -- if they did, "Other AI" would always be #1 by volume and tell readers nothing useful.
Newsletter
Subscribe to JobShift Weekly
A weekly briefing on changes in the US AI labor market, covering hiring activity and AI-attributed workforce reductions.
- Coverage: AI hiring activity worldwide and AI-attributed layoffs by US state, sourced from WARN notices, SEC filings, and reviewed news reports.
- Inclusion criteria: each event references a publicly stated AI rationale.
- Distribution: one email per week. No subscription fee. Unsubscribe at any time.
Methodology and source list available at /methodology .