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: 2026-09 (last full calendar month, vs prior month 2026-08). 3,576 AI hiring events in 2026-09 (US) vs 3,418 in 2026-08.
Top by volume
Most-hired AI role families in the US view. Ranked by event count.
| # | Role family | Events | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AI Software Engineer | 949 | +2% |
| 2 | AI Hardware / Silicon | 331 | -4% |
| 3 | AI Product Manager | 294 | +8% |
| 4 | Corporate Operations | 277 | +14% |
| 5 | Agentic AI | 218 | +31% |
| 6 | ML Engineer | 176 | +28% |
| 7 | MLOps / AI Infrastructure | 131 | +11% |
| 8 | Solutions Architect | 129 | -33% |
| 9 | Research Scientist | 122 | +26% |
| 10 | AI Engineer | 115 | +74% |
| 11 | Generative AI | 110 | -19% |
| 12 | Applied Scientist | 104 | +11% |
| 13 | Recruiting / Talent | 104 | +9% |
| 14 | Solutions Engineer | 97 | -6% |
| 15 | Account Executive | 71 | +1% |
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 | +74% | 115 |
| 2 | Recommender / Personalization | +64% | 18 |
| 3 | Computer Vision | +45% | 16 |
| 4 | Agentic AI | +31% | 218 |
| 5 | ML Engineer | +28% | 176 |
| 6 | Research Scientist | +26% | 122 |
| 7 | Corporate Operations | +14% | 277 |
| 8 | MLOps / AI Infrastructure | +11% | 131 |
| 9 | Applied Scientist | +11% | 104 |
| 10 | Recruiting / Talent | +9% | 104 |
| 11 | AI Product Manager | +8% | 294 |
| 12 | Data Engineer (AI) | +3% | 32 |
| 13 | AI Software Engineer | +2% | 949 |
| 14 | Account Executive | +1% | 71 |
| 15 | Robotics / Embodied AI | -4% | 55 |
Methodology
-
AI-only: events filtered to
ai_tierIN ('strong', 'medium') -- excludes weak/no-signal hiring entirely. - Monthly anchor: "current" = 2026-09 (last full calendar month), "prior" = 2026-08. 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 .