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). 3,009 AI hiring events in 2026-05 (US) vs 2,379 in 2026-04.
Top by volume
Most-hired AI role families in the US view. Ranked by event count.
| # | Role family | Events | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AI Software Engineer | 808 | +14% |
| 2 | AI Hardware / Silicon | 405 | +166% |
| 3 | AI Product Manager | 245 | +47% |
| 4 | Corporate Operations | 186 | -5% |
| 5 | Solutions Architect | 183 | +71% |
| 6 | Generative AI | 150 | +52% |
| 7 | Agentic AI | 144 | +125% |
| 8 | ML Engineer | 129 | +30% |
| 9 | MLOps / AI Infrastructure | 94 | +18% |
| 10 | Research Scientist | 84 | -14% |
| 11 | Solutions Engineer | 78 | -8% |
| 12 | Applied Scientist | 69 | +97% |
| 13 | AI Engineer | 67 | +253% |
| 14 | Robotics / Embodied AI | 56 | +155% |
| 15 | AI Safety / Alignment | 53 | -27% |
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 Engineer | +253% | 67 |
| 2 | AI Hardware / Silicon | +166% | 405 |
| 3 | Robotics / Embodied AI | +155% | 56 |
| 4 | Agentic AI | +125% | 144 |
| 5 | Applied Scientist | +97% | 69 |
| 6 | Solutions Architect | +71% | 183 |
| 7 | Generative AI | +52% | 150 |
| 8 | AI Product Manager | +47% | 245 |
| 9 | Data Engineer (AI) | +35% | 23 |
| 10 | ML Engineer | +30% | 129 |
| 11 | Computer Vision | +27% | 14 |
| 12 | Recruiting / Talent | +21% | 47 |
| 13 | MLOps / AI Infrastructure | +18% | 94 |
| 14 | AI Software Engineer | +14% | 808 |
| 15 | Corporate Operations | -5% | 186 |
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.
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Methodology and source list available at /methodology .