Go for The Upper Crust: Top AI Developer Jobs

Here are the hottest skills and demand-spots that can build up more momentum as AI becomes more and more mainstream in the industry. It’s great to think of a sci-fi future. Robots, chat-bots, sentient butlers and intuitive apps – what a world! Full of intelligence and comfort!

But who would configure these intelligent creatures? There has to be a silent army of human brains and prowess at work to lead humanity to a future where speed, convenience and cognition converge at new levels altogether.

That explains the surge in demand for a new kind of Artificial Intelligence (AI) developer breed.

The AI jobs will proliferate with a corresponding uptick in demand and compensation. If we look at some recent LinkedIn data, hiring growth for AI and Machine Learning (ML) has exhibited a 74% annual hike in the past 4 years. As per data from Indeed, ML Engineer job openings shot up 344%, and for data scientists, it was about 78% between 2015 to 2018 (with an average base salary of $146,085–Best Jobs In The US study). It also showed a 37% annual jump in demand for Data Scientists and related technical positions; with a 40% growth in demand for technical professionals with robotics expertise.

The way jobs are ranked here says a lot: ML engineers at #1; full-stack developer at #3; Salesforce developer at #10; robotics engineer at #11, senior product designer at #12, computer vision engineer at #13, product owner at #15, agile coach at #18 and data scientist at #22.

Jobs and requirements are rising and will accelerate much more in the future. The industry needs an able and ready pool of minds to take care of the projects, ideas and innovations that the AI industry is betting on now.

Watch out for the new paradigm that is going to define who is hired and why?

1. Demand for chat-bots and self-service options to customers is rising at a brisk pace after a lot of BFSI enterprises have introduced these bots. There will be a need for more consumer-oriented general-purpose virtual assistants and development of conversational AI in enterprises, as we move ahead.
2. Data scientists and experts on predictive analytics will also be the hot spot job opportunity. These can range across any point on the spectrum – AI engineer, programmer algorithm expert etc.
3. In terms of programming, new avenues might pop strongly on the radar while the strength of R and Python expertise will continue.
4. Ancillary industry components will also lead to AI jobs that will come together as an ecosystem of skills to round off AI solutions in a proper way – Like Hadoop, Spark, Java, AWS frameworks, Azure developers and Cloud applications.
5. Engineers will gain a new foothold in the future AI industry. It hinges on them now to take the industry in the right direction by supplying the necessary expertise in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), ML, Robotics and Data Analytics.
6. Specific roles would grow in the area of algorithms: from algorithm development to testing, reporting, assessment, and optimization.
7. Models would come centre-stage and anyone who can deliver strong skills in model construction, end-to-end pilots and implementation would get a considerable edge over others.
8. This is again where AI jobs in the areas of learning would grow manifold and in various directions: deep learning, unsupervised and reinforcement learning models, transfer learning, optimization and probabilistic graphical models.
9. Proficiency would be demanded and strongly rewarded when we think of AI applications like virtual assistants, predictive routing, process automation, modelling, speech analytics, real-time transcription, customer assistance, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, automated forecasting, and data-driven decision making.
10. More and more sectors would open up to applications that leverage augmented and prescriptive intelligence.

So make sure that you have the training and competencies to ride this new wave that is coming in strongly. It’s time to embark on a new force that is going to change the industry and the world in a big way. Almost every vertical would need experts who know how to give AI to them. But if you know how to make it precise and relevant for them, then you would be a class apart already. Get that confidence. A great start to developing the much-needed expertise would be the AI/ML Program for professionals by IIIT Hyderabad Machine Learning Lab. Training now is as important as training right.