The Most In-Demand AI Roles for 2026

I recently spent time with Evgeny Shadchnev, an AI consultant and the founder, of Makers, the UK's leading tech training provider.

🤔 We discussed what will be the most in-demand AI roles in 2026?

Top 10 roles we believe will see the highest demand in 2026.

1️⃣ AI Engineers (Applied, NLP, LLM, ML)

2️⃣ Data Engineers

3️⃣ Forward Deployed Engineers

4️⃣ VP Engineering

5️⃣ CTOs with AI experience

6️⃣ VP-level leaders with commercial AI

7️⃣ C-Suite leaders with commercial AI

8️⃣ Replacement CEOs with AI-led transformation experience

9️⃣ Operations leaders actively using AI products

🔟 Enterprise AI software sales

My view is simple: AI will dominate hiring in 2026

Even if AI progress stopped today we’d still have a decade’s worth of work just implementing what already exists. The gap between what LLMs can do and what most companies are actually using is still enormous.

Yes, there are eye-watering packages for frontier AI engineers. But the bigger fight is for people who can orchestrate AI well, those who can turn capability into real, provable ROI inside a specific business.

That means judgement, communication and cross-functional thinking matter more than ever. AI increases speed of build, not clarity of thought.

In my experience, operators who adapt their existing expertise to AI often outperform juniors who know the tools but lack real-world context.

If you’re thinking seriously about AI implementation, Evgeny Shadchnev has a brilliant grip on the market right now and is totally worth speaking to - reach out to him, he’ll be happy to discuss.

Are you a Founder, Operator, or Investor at a VC/PE-backed company?

If you’re thinking about driving revenue, replacing underperformers, launching a new market, then we should talk.

👉 Most suitable for candidates interested in working for companies with 20 to 500 headcount, VC-backed Series A, B, C scale-ups, challenger brands and Private Equity.