As AI reshapes the job market, here are 16 roles it has created
A knowledge architect. An orchestration engineer. A conversation designer. A human AI collaboration leader. If you’ve never heard of these job titles, it’s because they have just debuted at companies aiming to fuel their businesses with artificial intelligence.
From the nation’s largest employer, Walmart, to tech companies Salesforce and Workday, and accounting firm KPMG, companies are creating new jobs amid the AI boom. Some are entirely new, while others are an evolution of a former role or a combination of previous jobs plus new responsibilities, companies say. The developments come as many workers fear being replaced by AI, especially as some CEOs warn of massive job displacement. The shift in jobs represents the next era of work, which many researchers and companies predict will involve humans either using or working alongside AI.
“This is a fundamental dynamic of a new tech sweeping into the economy,” Mark Muro, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, said about the new job titles. “Some of these are probably cul-de-sacs that are seen as not on point, some will be larger than people expect, and some we can’t imagine at this point.”
About 20% of U.S. professionals have job titles today that didn’t exist in 2000, according to LinkedIn.
Now generative AI is accelerating the change, creating new roles even if there aren’t industry standards for job titles or descriptions. A single tech role might be listed under more than 40 different titles, LinkedIn said.
“We’ve had AI for a long time, but the scale at which folks are starting to use it is greater than ever before,” said Kory Kantenga, LinkedIn’s head of economics for the Americas. So companies need new roles to facilitate the changes, he said.
Ruth Hickin, vice president of workforce innovation at Salesforce, said the tech company introduces new jobs “all the time.” “Some of it is based on company strategy, but a lot of it is based on the way the technology is shifting jobs.”
Here are some roles workers might encounter as the job market continues to evolve.
User experience jobs
These jobs help companies build and improve customer interactions with digital products.
AI conversation designer: Creates the language, flow and personality of AI interfaces so that they are easy to use, helpful and engaging. At Salesforce, required skills include prompt engineering, an understanding of the psychology of users and script writing.
Knowledge architect: Provides expertise to shape what an AI agent knows, its skills and how accurately it accomplishes tasks. Also is responsible for ensuring that the actions AI agents take have the proper context and reflect the business. At KPMG, the required skills for this job include understanding how to structure information in knowledge graphs and the ability to describe data in a domain or context.
Interaction designer: Designs models for interactions between humans and AI agents. Also is responsible for trust and collaboration between humans and AI. At KPMG, qualifications include skills in conversational user experience, prompt design and the ability to explain how systems make certain decisions.
AI artist engineer: This umbrella term includes such job titles as AI artist and AI production artist, according to LinkedIn. At New York-based media production company CoCreativ, the role is responsible for using AI to produce strategic and visually appealing content aligned with brands.
Prompt engineer: This job started popping up a couple of years ago, but like AI engineers, it has only become more popular, LinkedIn said. In a recent job posting, Adobe said it sought a prompt engineer to design, test and integrate strategies for AI agents and enterprise use cases. Duties include building AI agent personas and behaviors, and tailoring prompts for specific uses. Qualifications include experience in AI or machine learning product development and a grasp of large language model capabilities and limitations.
Workforce and business operations roles
These roles are charged with managing activities related to a company’s workers and how the business runs.
Human AI collaboration lead: Defines strategies and frameworks for how human teams and artificial intelligence systems work together to achieve business objectives and improve performance. At Salesforce, people in this role need experience in change management, organizational strategy and crossfunctional leadership.
Adoption strategist: An upcoming role at KPMG that will be responsible for aligning AI agents with business strategy, the organization’s design and workforce planning. It also will be responsible for ensuring adoption among workers. Required skills include business process transformation, communication and knowledge of ethical, safe and trustworthy frameworks for the rollout of AI.
Technical jobs
These roles often help build products or models and require a level of technical knowledge.
Responsible use AI architect: This could include titles such as staff machine learning engineer for responsible AI, LinkedIn said. At Pinterest, this role is charged with creating responsible AI safeguards. Required skills at Pinterest include familiarity with machine-learning architectures, experience leading cross-team engineering efforts, and a graduate degree in computer science or related fields.
Orchestration engineer: Connects multiple AI agents, tools and workflows so they work together smoothly. Also defines autonomy and guardrails for agents. At KPMG, the skills needed include experience in context and memory design, guardrails and improving reliability.
AI engineer: Though AI engineers have existed for years, this role is on the rise for companies even outside the tech industry, LinkedIn said. Best Buy, for example, recently posted an opening for an AI engineer to build scalable solutions for the business and its customers, according to a recent job post. Requirements include a degree in computer science, engineering, math or related field; experience in machine learning, data engineering or software development; and programming skills in Python and SQL.
AI architect: This role designs and manages the construction of the artificial intelligence infrastructure, including data pipelines, computing environment and core machine learning models, at Salesforce. Required skills include system design, cloud architecture and data governance.
Data annotator: This job has been around for decades but is on the rise because of AI, according to LinkedIn. The role is responsible for labeling, categorizing and tagging raw data to make it understandable for artificial intelligence and machine learning models. This position may require knowledge of a scripting language such as Python and familiarity with large language models.
Supervisory roles
These are the people leading teams at the management or executive level.
Head of AI: The umbrella term covers the leading role of AI initiatives at companies. At Workday, the head of agentic AI is responsible for building and scaling product innovation and overseeing the company’s specialized business products. Required skills include the combination of technical product management and leadership.
Agent operations manager: An upcoming job at KPMG that will be responsible for managing AI agents’ day-to-day performance, incidents and changes. The role is responsible for agent upkeep. Required skills include experience in operational platforms that manage agents, responding to unexpected disruptions, and processes to manage the gradual decline in an AI model’s performance.
Senior vice president of AI strategy: At Workday, this role shapes and drives long-term AI strategy. The goal is to help customers navigate technological adoption and ensure that the company can solve their business challenges responsibly.
Executive vice president of AI: Walmart debuted two new executive vice president roles. One executive vice president oversees product and design and is responsible for the company’s AI transformation. Another, overseeing AI platforms, is expected to help increase productivity, speed and innovation and help build and design the company’s collection of intelligent systems.
• Danielle Abril covers technology and its impact on workers across industries for The Washington Post.