Loading the job postings and counting them…
Loading the job postings and counting them…
AI Career Compass · role
Builds products and systems on top of AI models. Language-model features, agents, retrieval, evaluation, and the software around them; not only "wrappers" or chatbots.
Measured AI engineer roles are 13% of the AI postings we track: 223 of 1,694.1
Measured The skills these postings ask for most are large language models (asked for in 90 of 223), software engineering practice (80 of 223) and backend services and APIs (76 of 223).123
Written by an AI analyst (claude-opus-5-5) and checked by code against the numbers it cites.
What these postings say the work involves, counted from their lists of duties. A posting can list several.
Out of these 223 postings. “Asked for” adds required, one of several options, and listed; preferred is counted apart.
Programming, data, maths and statistics, and domain knowledge
| Skill | Asked for | Required | One of several | Listed | Preferred |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Software engineering practice | 80 of 223 | 22 | 0 | 58 | 9 |
| Python | 75 of 223 | 22 | 17 | 36 | 20 |
| TypeScript or JavaScript | 36 of 223 | 4 | 10 | 22 | 39 |
| Go | 23 of 223 | 4 | 13 | 6 | 6 |
| Rust | 12 of 223 | 2 | 8 | 2 | 7 |
| Data analysis | 10 of 223 | 1 | 0 | 9 | 8 |
| Statistics and probability | 9 of 223 | 1 | 0 | 8 | 0 |
| SQL | 8 of 223 | 3 | 0 | 5 | 4 |
Modelling, training, retrieval, agents, evaluation and other methods
| Skill | Asked for | Required | One of several | Listed | Preferred |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Large language models | 90 of 223 | 30 | 4 | 56 | 51 |
| AI agents | 75 of 223 | 24 | 12 | 39 | 41 |
| Tool use and function calling | 40 of 223 | 19 | 2 | 19 | 12 |
| Machine learning | 39 of 223 | 14 | 1 | 24 | 20 |
| Retrieval and RAG | 24 of 223 | 9 | 6 | 9 | 29 |
| Building AI-powered products | 24 of 223 | 7 | 1 | 16 | 5 |
| Evaluation (evals) | 21 of 223 | 5 | 0 | 16 | 38 |
| Prompt design | 20 of 223 | 2 | 3 | 15 | 24 |
Deployment, infrastructure, reliability, security, monitoring and cost
| Skill | Asked for | Required | One of several | Listed | Preferred |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Backend services and APIs | 76 of 223 | 27 | 3 | 46 | 5 |
| Distributed systems | 46 of 223 | 13 | 3 | 30 | 5 |
| System design and architecture | 39 of 223 | 21 | 0 | 18 | 2 |
| Cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) | 38 of 223 | 17 | 2 | 19 | 12 |
| Kubernetes and containers | 27 of 223 | 11 | 1 | 15 | 11 |
| Reliability and incident response | 27 of 223 | 3 | 0 | 24 | 9 |
| Monitoring and observability | 24 of 223 | 6 | 0 | 18 | 14 |
| Databases and data warehouses | 19 of 223 | 8 | 2 | 9 | 19 |
Publishing and leading research
| Skill | Asked for | Required | One of several | Listed | Preferred |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open-source contributions | 7 of 223 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 17 |
| Leading research | 4 of 223 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 2 |
| Research publications | 0 of 223 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 |
Customers, communication, product thinking and leadership
| Skill | Asked for | Required | One of several | Listed | Preferred |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Communication | 62 of 223 | 14 | 0 | 48 | 6 |
| Leading and mentoring | 43 of 223 | 10 | 1 | 32 | 6 |
| Working with customers | 34 of 223 | 5 | 0 | 29 | 8 |
| Product thinking | 18 of 223 | 3 | 0 | 15 | 3 |
| Technical writing | 14 of 223 | 4 | 1 | 9 | 1 |
AI rules, policy and trust and safety
| Skill | Asked for | Required | One of several | Listed | Preferred |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Risk and compliance | 4 of 223 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 8 |
| AI governance and regulation | 3 of 223 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 1 |
Measured TypeScript or JavaScript is listed as preferred, meaning nice to have but not required, in 39 of 223 postings.1
Measured Retrieval and RAG, which let a model look up documents before it answers, is listed as preferred in 29 of 223 postings.1
Employers list these as preferred. That they ask does not show that these skills decide who is hired.
The systems these postings expect people to build, run or work within.
Only what the postings state. Most do not say everything, so each number has its own count of postings.
107 of 223 postings state a minimum; the median is 5 years.
44 of 223 postings state a degree; 25 of them accept equivalent experience instead.
26 postings are remote. Of these, 25 name where you must live or work from, 0 do not say, and 1 says anywhere.
What employers advertise, grouped only when the ranges are comparable. Not a prediction of what you would earn.
Measured For full-time jobs in the US, the median of advertised range midpoints is USD 296,235 per year in base pay, from 53 comparable disclosures.12
174 of 223 postings (78%) advertise a pay range. Employers that publish ranges may differ from those that do not, and some places require it by law, so these ranges do not describe all pay.
| Group of alike ranges | Postings | Median of range midpoints | Middle half of midpoints |
|---|---|---|---|
| USD, a year, base pay, United States, full-time12 employers | 53 | $296,235 | $266,500 to $312,500 |
| USD, a year, base pay, United States, employment type not stated2 employers | 10 | $340,000 | $302,500 to $403,750 |
This is advertised pay, not what anyone earns. We pool ranges only when currency, pay period, pay type, country and employment type are the same, and only with at least 10 of them. Nothing is converted. 111 other ranges could not be pooled (period not stated, several countries, or too few alike).
Advice built from what these 223 postings ask for. Tick what you can already do; we suggest up to three steps and one portfolio project, each with the requirement behind it and a way to show the result.
Measured Tracking began on 6 October 2026, so this page rests on one reading of 223 postings and cannot show a trend yet.1
Measured The postings we track come from 38 employers that publish their jobs through public feeds, not from the whole job market.1
Measured Many open listings are not new: only 58 of 223 were first published in the 30 days before our data cutoff, and 17 are more than a year old.12
How everything is counted: our method. All roles: AI Career Compass.