Unlock the Future: Top AI Roles and Skills You Need Now

The in-demand skills fuelling a new wave of AI roles

Experts highlight that the newest AI jobs are less about formal technical training and more focused on soft skills like customer relations, stakeholder management, and communication.

"Most of these emerging roles are sitting at the intersection of tech fluency and human smarts," said AI consultant Tracy Sheen. "While you don’t need to code, you do need to be curious, adaptable, and confident working with digital tools."

Trending Skills in the Job Market

Adam Shapley, managing director at recruitment firm Hays, notes that the most in-demand skills are centered around human skills, rather than purely technical capabilities. Non-traditional AI-enabled roles are emerging across various industries, including:

• Predictive lead scoring
• Customer journey mapping
• Sales enablement
• Supply chain planning and logistics

Emerging AI-Related Jobs

• Customer Success Manager: A hybrid tech support-customer service role requiring high levels of emotional intelligence. Average salary: $95,000 - $115,000/year.
• Prompt Engineer (AI Whisperer): Experts in structuring queries for optimal AI outcomes.
• AI Ethicist: Navigates ethical challenges of AI. Average salary: $115,800/year.
• Data Annotator: Adds context to data for machine understanding. Average earnings: $27/hour.
• Chief Remote Work Officer: Builds company culture in distributed workforces.

Foundational Experience

Gartner work futurist Aaron McEwan emphasizes that roles like these benefit from foundational experience in liberal arts, history, or English literature. University of Sydney’s Dr. Sandra Peter suggests watching for titles like human-in-the-loop operator and algorithmic auditor.

Getting Started

Sheen recommends gaining hands-on experience with AI tools and taking micro-courses in prompt engineering, data literacy, or automation tools. "For people in comms, marketing, admin, or ops, learning how to orchestrate AI, not build it, is where the jobs are," she said.