‘The biggest barrier to growth is not access to technology, it is access to the right people’: Demand for developers with AI skills has surged 597% – but enterprises are still struggling to find the right talent

AI-augmented developer roles have increased nearly six-fold over the last five years, as enterprises move from AI experimentation to implementation, according to new research from Randstad Digital.

While there's been an increase of just 28% for traditional developers, the figure for developers with AI expertise has grown by 597%, with nearly one-in-four developer roles now requiring these skillsets.

Analysis of more than 35 million job postings shows technical professionals who acquire specialized credentials are leapfrogging traditional seniority tiers, with AWS Solutions Architect (Pro) and LangGraph/RAG Architect certifications driving estimated salary increases of 54% and 31%, respectively.

"Enterprise AI is no longer a future investment; it is today's operational reality. Yet the biggest barrier to growth is not access to technology, it is access to the right people," said Michael Morris, global head of platform and talent at Randstad Digital.

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"Buying AI is easy. Integrating it safely and securely across a complex enterprise is where the true challenge lies. The specialists who can integrate, govern and scale AI inside complex organizations are in critically short supply."

While foundational roles like prompt engineers are still growing at 174%, demand has rapidly escalated up the skills ladder, with AI trainers now the fastest-growing role globally, up 281%.

As ITPro reported in February, demand for AI trainers has skyrocketed over the last 18 months. Researchers said this reflects a broader market pivot toward roles that turn AI’s potential into real support for business growth.

Demand for AI solutions leads is up 226%, process automation specialists up 196%, and AI architects up 152%, Randstad noted.

Finding talent is harder than it looks

While demand for AI-related skills is there, actually filling these positions is far harder than it appears, Randstad noted. Indeed, enterprises are facing acute challenges in sourcing talent.

AI solutions leads are currently the hardest role to fill globally, for example, with time-to-fill timelines hitting 54 days in key markets and vacancy rates of nearly 27% in the US and 18% in the UK.

Despite having talent pools of roughly 100,000 professionals, machine learning engineers face vacancy rates of 8.2% in the US and 11.2% in India. Japan, meanwhile, is facing some of the sharpest shortages globally, with a 46.8% vacancy rate for AI engineers and 25% for generative AI engineers.

All this is reflected by hiring timelines, according to Randstad. While a standard IT role typically takes 38 days to fill, the recruitment window for advanced AI infrastructure roles has expanded to an average of 54 days in the UK and 53 days in the US.

This stretches to a high of 90 days for Process Automation Specialists in Italy.

The result of this is that salary offers are rising sharply, particularly in the US. Across the Atlantic, large language model (LLM) architects have a vacancy rate of 19%, commanding average salaries of $240,000.

Brazil and Argentina have rapidly emerged as a high-growth corridor for specialized AI services, now representing over 15% of global postings combined. In Europe, the UK, Poland, Spain, and Germany show steady demand, with individual national shares between 1.8% and 2.8%, while China accounts for 7.5% of the global job volume.

"AI talent concentrated in the US and India but fast-growing corridors emerging in Brazil, Argentina and beyond, cross-border hiring is becoming a core enterprise strategy," said Morris.

"Organizations that combine global talent sourcing with deliberate investment in upskilling their existing workforce are best placed to close the gap."

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