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). 3,583 AI hiring events in 2026-09 (US) vs 3,160 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 | 950 | +7% |
| 2 | AI Hardware / Silicon | 331 | +2% |
| 3 | AI Product Manager | 295 | +17% |
| 4 | Corporate Operations | 277 | +23% |
| 5 | Agentic AI | 219 | +48% |
| 6 | ML Engineer | 177 | +30% |
| 7 | MLOps / AI Infrastructure | 131 | +24% |
| 8 | Solutions Architect | 129 | -28% |
| 9 | Research Scientist | 122 | +39% |
| 10 | AI Engineer | 115 | +77% |
| 11 | Generative AI | 110 | -2% |
| 12 | Recruiting / Talent | 105 | +18% |
| 13 | Applied Scientist | 104 | +70% |
| 14 | Solutions Engineer | 97 | +3% |
| 15 | Account Executive | 71 | +8% |
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 | +77% | 115 |
| 2 | Applied Scientist | +70% | 104 |
| 3 | Agentic AI | +48% | 219 |
| 4 | Computer Vision | +45% | 16 |
| 5 | Research Scientist | +39% | 122 |
| 6 | ML Engineer | +30% | 177 |
| 7 | MLOps / AI Infrastructure | +24% | 131 |
| 8 | Corporate Operations | +23% | 277 |
| 9 | Data Engineer (AI) | +19% | 32 |
| 10 | Recruiting / Talent | +18% | 105 |
| 11 | AI Product Manager | +17% | 295 |
| 12 | Robotics / Embodied AI | +10% | 55 |
| 13 | Account Executive | +8% | 71 |
| 14 | AI Software Engineer | +7% | 950 |
| 15 | Solutions Engineer | +3% | 97 |
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.
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Methodology and source list available at /methodology .