Loading the job postings and counting them…
Loading the job postings and counting them…
AI Career Compass · role
Works with customers to build and deploy AI systems in real settings. Forward-deployed, solutions, customer and deployment engineers, and applied AI roles that face customers.
Measured In our tracked sample, forward-deployed and solutions engineers account for 386 of the 1,694 AI postings, about 23%.1
Measured The skills asked for most often are working with customers, asked for in 220 of 386 postings, and communication, asked for in 202 of 386.12
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 386 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Python | 183 of 386 | 35 | 38 | 110 | 14 |
| Software engineering practice | 96 of 386 | 20 | 21 | 55 | 9 |
| TypeScript or JavaScript | 86 of 386 | 12 | 32 | 42 | 11 |
| Data analysis | 50 of 386 | 1 | 21 | 28 | 5 |
| Scala | 25 of 386 | 5 | 2 | 18 | 0 |
| SQL | 22 of 386 | 9 | 5 | 8 | 3 |
| Health and medicine | 14 of 386 | 0 | 3 | 11 | 17 |
| Science (biology, chemistry, physics) | 12 of 386 | 1 | 1 | 10 | 8 |
Modelling, training, retrieval, agents, evaluation and other methods
| Skill | Asked for | Required | One of several | Listed | Preferred |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Large language models | 176 of 386 | 25 | 2 | 149 | 35 |
| Machine learning | 152 of 386 | 17 | 0 | 135 | 24 |
| AI agents | 88 of 386 | 14 | 5 | 69 | 14 |
| Evaluation (evals) | 56 of 386 | 2 | 0 | 54 | 5 |
| Building AI-powered products | 35 of 386 | 6 | 0 | 29 | 6 |
| Fine-tuning and post-training | 26 of 386 | 1 | 3 | 22 | 1 |
| Retrieval and RAG | 25 of 386 | 1 | 6 | 18 | 5 |
| Prompt design | 23 of 386 | 3 | 1 | 19 | 15 |
Deployment, infrastructure, reliability, security, monitoring and cost
| Skill | Asked for | Required | One of several | Listed | Preferred |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Backend services and APIs | 129 of 386 | 26 | 3 | 100 | 8 |
| Cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure) | 91 of 386 | 12 | 5 | 74 | 19 |
| Data pipelines (Spark, Airflow, Kafka) | 56 of 386 | 7 | 5 | 44 | 18 |
| MLOps and ML platforms | 54 of 386 | 8 | 0 | 46 | 14 |
| System design and architecture | 42 of 386 | 1 | 0 | 41 | 6 |
| Distributed systems | 40 of 386 | 1 | 0 | 39 | 3 |
| CI/CD and developer tooling | 38 of 386 | 9 | 0 | 29 | 1 |
| Reliability and incident response | 33 of 386 | 3 | 2 | 28 | 4 |
Publishing and leading research
| Skill | Asked for | Required | One of several | Listed | Preferred |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open-source contributions | 6 of 386 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 9 |
| Research publications | 1 of 386 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
Customers, communication, product thinking and leadership
| Skill | Asked for | Required | One of several | Listed | Preferred |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Working with customers | 220 of 386 | 33 | 0 | 187 | 23 |
| Communication | 202 of 386 | 40 | 0 | 162 | 9 |
| Leading and mentoring | 53 of 386 | 5 | 0 | 48 | 13 |
| Technical writing | 37 of 386 | 10 | 0 | 27 | 2 |
| Product thinking | 20 of 386 | 1 | 0 | 19 | 10 |
AI rules, policy and trust and safety
| Skill | Asked for | Required | One of several | Listed | Preferred |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Risk and compliance | 10 of 386 | 2 | 0 | 8 | 20 |
| AI governance and regulation | 6 of 386 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 1 |
Measured Postings we track list large language models, the AI systems that read and write text, as preferred but not required in 35 of 386.1
Measured Postings we track list machine learning, building systems that learn from data, as preferred but not required in 24 of 386.1
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.
212 of 386 postings state a minimum; the median is 5 years.
90 of 386 postings state a degree; 82 of them accept equivalent experience instead.
69 postings are remote. Of these, 69 name where you must live or work from, 0 do not say, and 0 say anywhere.
What employers advertise, grouped only when the ranges are comparable. Not a prediction of what you would earn.
Measured In the postings we track, the median of advertised range midpoints for full-time jobs in the US is USD 247,000 per year in base pay, from 57 comparable disclosures.12
199 of 386 postings (52%) 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-time10 employers | 57 | $247,000 | $225,000 to $284,500 |
| USD, a year, base pay, United States, employment type not stated3 employers | 21 | $277,500 | $265,500 to $347,500 |
| USD, a year, on-target earnings (base plus commission), United States, full-time4 employers | 18 | $221,725 | $198,413 to $259,963 |
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. 103 other ranges could not be pooled (period not stated, several countries, or too few alike).
Advice built from what these 386 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.
Analysis Tracking began on 6 October 2026, so the 386 postings here come from one reading and cannot show a trend yet.1
Measured These postings come from 32 employers that publish jobs through public feeds, not from the whole job market, and the three employers with the most postings supply 229 of the 386.12
Measured Many open listings are not new: only 117 of 386 were first published in the 30 days before the data cutoff, and 18 were first published more than a year before it.12
How everything is counted: our method. All roles: AI Career Compass.