Given the explosion of AI models in the market and the rapid advancements that have followed, it's no surprise that AI and data science professionals remain in high demand. But just as companies struggle to understand the business use cases for LLMs, they're also struggling to identify corresponding job roles. To make matters worse, new obstacles are emerging along the way.
“The competition to acquire AI-related talent is accelerating. It's not just an AI issue,” he said. Babak HodjatCTO of AI at Cognizant Technology Solutions.
What types of jobs fall under the AI talent category?
According to Frank Chen, head of natural language processing at Persado, the list includes:
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A research scientist conducting cutting-edge research to develop new models and techniques for generative AI tasks.
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Machine learning/NLP/Data/Software engineers who build and deploy GenAI models.
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Data scientists and analysts who experiment and analyze the results of the models.
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A content specialist who will create guidelines to control the generated content, collaborate with the AI development team to refine the generated content, evaluate the quality of the generated content, and provide feedback to improve the GenAI model.
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An experienced UX/UI designer who ensures that the designed AI interface meets the needs of the users.
But competition for jobs is intensifying in other fields as well.
“In 2024, we will see increased competition for cyber and software development talent as a result of significant privacy concerns and cost-saving budget reallocations driven by the generative AI boom,” Hodjat said.
As AI matures and companies get better at leveraging it, new job roles will undoubtedly emerge and others will quickly disappear.
“Data science and AI continue to be an industry poised for significant growth, but there are certain roles in particular that we believe will be in high demand in the near future,” he said. coefficientThe company boasts a client list that includes NASA, NASDAQ, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Barclays, Siemens, Shell, Yahoo, Microsoft, Cornell University, and the University of Chicago.
Prompt Engineer and AI Content Editor
Some job titles are already well-known, such as prompt engineer or AI content editor. However, these roles lack a standard description or salary structure. For example, job boards are filled with job ads for AI content editors that pay as little as $20-40 per hour. These are usually posted by employers who believe these roles require simple skills and little effort. However, this is patently false. Depending on the complexity of the subject matter, editing and fact-checking GenAI output can be more time-consuming and labor-intensive for a human than creating it from scratch.
Prompt engineer jobs also vary widely in job descriptions and salary levels. Vague job descriptions and low salary offers can be the result of employers' lack of experience working with AI or a complete lack of understanding of AI use cases, or vice versa. Employers know exactly what technical and linguistic skills are required for this group of job seekers, and the salary offers better reflect the level of complexity.
in any case, ZipRecruiter“As of Nov 29, 2023, the average annual pay for a Prompt Engineering job in the United States is $62,977 an year. Just in case you need a simple salary calculator, that works out to approximately $30.28 an hour.”
Eventually the job of a prompt engineer may go away since AI agents can already write their own prompts, but for now most companies are considering hiring a prompt engineer to keep token costs down while still getting the most out of AI.
LLM Engineer and NLP Engineer
As many would expect, the demand for Large Scale Language Modeling (LLM) engineers and Natural Language Processing (NLP) engineers is on the rise.
“The new highly specialised role, called 'LLM Engineer', is primarily found in organisations that have reached an advanced stage in their AI journey and have conducted numerous experiments, but are facing challenges in operationalising AI models at scale,” said Kjell Carlsson, head of data science strategy and evangelism at Domino Data Lab.
Glass Door Reports As of November 2023, the estimated total salary for an LLM Engineer is $164,029 per year in the United States region, with the average salary being $129,879 per year. The total salary range is $123,000 to $224,000. ZipRecruiter Peg The average total pay for this group is $142,663 per year, or $69 per hour.
NLP engineers are seeing increased demand for AI-based and non-AI-based projects, which themselves continue to evolve.
“For example, natural language processing engineers, who essentially create applications that process human language, are in high demand for chatbots today, but will continue to see increased demand for sentiment analysis and content recommendation systems over time,” Gardner says.
Glass Door Reports NLP engineers can expect to earn between $130,000 and $180,000 a year. Talent.com Reports Wide salary range from $100,000 to $210,000 per year.
New AI and Data Science Jobs
There are many other jobs emerging, and topping this list are AI agent jobs and skills.
“Agent View of AI [autonomous AI agents] “It will play an increasingly important role in AI-enabling projects and become a sought-after skill,” Hodjat says. “As different orchestration frameworks and platforms compete to become the standard, software engineering will move towards adopting LLM-based agents in the construction of software systems.”
Other new jobs are harder to define, making salary ranges harder to pin down.
“Some of the most in-demand AI roles today include machine learning engineer, AI engineer and AI architect,” said Shmuel Fink, chair of the Master of Science in Data Analytics program. Touro University Graduate School of Engineering“However, several other AI-related roles are also gaining popularity, including AI ethicist, AI product manager, AI researcher, computer vision engineer, robotics engineer and AI safety engineer. Additionally, some roles require industry-specific expertise, such as healthcare AI engineer.”
But back on the ranch, employees of any job role will become more valuable if they have AI skills. As employees acquire skills, some specialized jobs will evolve and others will disappear. What's certain is that we'll see more AI-driven and AI-related change in the future.
