I was reading about the talent shortage. The numbers are quite interesting.
87 percent of organizations are actively trying to hire AI engineers. Average time to fill an AI position? 142 days. Compare that to 52 days for a general software engineer.
Global demand for AI talent? 4.2 million jobs needed by 2030. Available qualified supply? About 2.1 million.
That’s a 50 percent shortage built right into the numbers.
But here’s what really got me. The universities producing AI graduates can’t keep up. Companies are absorbing 70 percent of top AI talent directly from universities. The remaining students have to distribute across thousands of companies. And they’re all competing for the same small pool.
So what happens? Salary inflation. A junior AI engineer in San Francisco now makes $180,000 to $200,000 base salary. Five years ago, that was senior engineering money. Now it’s entry-level.
Companies are in a bind. They need AI engineers. But they can’t afford them. And even if they could, the engineers don’t exist yet.
So what’s actually happening on the ground? Three things.
First, companies are hiring people who are close to AI engineers. People with software engineering background who are willing to learn. Or people with strong math background who can code but are new to ML. They’re betting on bringing them up to speed internally.
Second, companies are investing in “AI-as-a-service.” Instead of hiring engineers to build models, they’re buying pre-built solutions from cloud providers. Amazon, Google, Microsoft all have out-of-the-box AI services. You don’t need an engineer. You just need someone who can use an API.
Third, companies are burning out the AI engineers they do have. The talent shortage is so acute that the few good engineers are working 60-70 hour weeks. Deals are falling through because key people quit. Projects are being indefinitely delayed because the team can’t scale.
I think 2026 will be the year companies realize they can’t hire their way out of this. They’ll have to fundamentally change how they work with AI. More outsourcing. More pre-built solutions. More remote hiring from globally distributed teams.
The talent shortage isn’t getting solved. It’s just forcing companies to reorganize around it.