No one knows exactly what 2022 will bring for the technology industry, but one thing is clear: artificial intelligence (AI) will play a bigger role than ever before. Organizations across the country are seeing AI as increasingly essential to their long-term strategies and are looking for technologists with the right mix of AI and machine learning skills.
According to Emsi Burning Glass, which collects and analyzes millions of job postings from across the country, the number of job postings seeking AI skills will increase by 297% over the next two years. In the past 12 months, there were approximately 142,346 job postings seeking AI skills. Jobs with a high AI component have a median salary of $103,168.
but which one Will AI skills be most in demand in technology jobs?Based on job posting data, data scientists, computer scientists/researchers, and data architects appear to be the most requested AI-related roles by employers. Please check the chart.
For other technical roles, such as software engineers, the need for AI skills is less pressing, but that could change in the coming years as more organizations adopt AI and machine learning for a variety of strategic goals, from improving customer service to making apps and services “smarter.” CompTIA recently asked 400 companies about the most common use cases for AI, and respondents cited everything from chatbots to sales lead scoring.
“Going forward, organizations will invest in technologies and services that enhance digital work, automation, and human-machine collaboration,” said Khali Henderson, senior partner at Buzz Theory and vice chair of CompTIA’s emerging technology community, in a statement accompanying these findings. “Emerging technologies such as AI and IoT will account for a large portion of that investment, with IDC forecasting $656 billion in investments globally this year.”
For data scientists and others who classify, store, and analyze large data sets, increasingly sophisticated AI and machine learning tools have the potential to yield far greater insights and predictions. While many people tend to equate artificial intelligence with cutting-edge projects such as self-driving cars, tasks such as effective data analysis may end up being much more common use cases for these technologies, at least for the next few years.
As CompTIA data shows, software engineers and others responsible for building apps and services may also use AI for chatbots and automation. Chatbots have not proven to be very good at handling user needs, but improvements and more sophisticated ML models could accelerate this progress. On the backend, AI could also improve no-code and low-code tools, allowing more engineers (and other employees) to build software. The possibilities are endless.
