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: 2026-05 (last full calendar month, vs prior month 2026-04). 4,460 AI hiring events in 2026-05 (WORLDWIDE) vs 3,493 in 2026-04.
Top by volume
Most-hired AI role families in the WORLDWIDE view. Ranked by event count.
| # | Role family | Events | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AI Software Engineer | 1,132 | +23% |
| 2 | AI Hardware / Silicon | 639 | +292% |
| 3 | Solutions Architect | 294 | +32% |
| 4 | AI Product Manager | 291 | +42% |
| 5 | Corporate Operations | 267 | +3% |
| 6 | Generative AI | 246 | +50% |
| 7 | Agentic AI | 190 | +100% |
| 8 | Solutions Engineer | 176 | -12% |
| 9 | Account Executive | 168 | -38% |
| 10 | ML Engineer | 163 | +9% |
| 11 | MLOps / AI Infrastructure | 133 | -2% |
| 12 | Research Scientist | 108 | -11% |
| 13 | AI Engineer | 101 | +216% |
| 14 | Applied Scientist | 84 | +115% |
| 15 | Robotics / Embodied AI | 70 | +150% |
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 Hardware / Silicon | +292% | 639 |
| 2 | AI Engineer | +216% | 101 |
| 3 | Robotics / Embodied AI | +150% | 70 |
| 4 | Applied Scientist | +115% | 84 |
| 5 | Agentic AI | +100% | 190 |
| 6 | Generative AI | +50% | 246 |
| 7 | Computer Vision | +43% | 20 |
| 8 | Data Engineer (AI) | +43% | 40 |
| 9 | AI Product Manager | +42% | 291 |
| 10 | Solutions Architect | +32% | 294 |
| 11 | AI Software Engineer | +23% | 1,132 |
| 12 | ML Engineer | +9% | 163 |
| 13 | AI Operations / Annotation | +8% | 41 |
| 14 | Recruiting / Talent | +6% | 57 |
| 15 | Corporate Operations | +3% | 267 |
Methodology
-
AI-only: events filtered to
ai_tierIN ('strong', 'medium') -- excludes weak/no-signal hiring entirely. - Monthly anchor: "current" = 2026-05 (last full calendar month), "prior" = 2026-04. Today's partial month is excluded so growth comparisons aren't biased by an incomplete denominator.
-
Role bucketing: a 29-bucket keyword dictionary
(see
src/classifiers/role_bucket.py). 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: ~38% of AI-tagged titles don't map to any of the 29 buckets (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 .