The job titles of 2026: GTM Engineer in, Prompt Engineer out
We tracked 1,501 companies for a year. Specific AI titles like Agent Engineer grew, the plain AI Engineer title shrank, GTM Engineer more than doubled its reach, and AI trainer jobs faded · as of November 1, 2026
Every hiring cycle brings new job titles, and this one is being shaped by AI. We wanted to know which of the titles born in this AI hiring cycle are actually catching on. We tracked the job boards of 1,501 companies from November 2025 to October 2026, and each month we counted how many of them were hiring for each title. To compare titles on one scale, we show this as companies per 1,000. GTM Engineer grew the most: 14 of every 1,000 companies were hiring one in November and 37 in October (+162%). AI Deployment and Solutions (+70%), Agent Engineer (+53%), AI Product Manager (+47%), and Applied AI (+40%) also grew faster than the older titles. The surprise is the plain AI Engineer title. 72 of every 1,000 companies were hiring one in November and 65 in October (-10%), a slightly bigger drop than Software Engineer (-7%).
Which new titles spread
Companies hiring for each title, per 1,000 of the 1,501 companies we tracked all year, in November 2025 and October 2026, and the change.
Each title grew in its own way. GTM Engineer did almost all of its growing over the winter: from 14 per 1,000 companies in November to 33 in March, then it stayed about flat. Agent Engineer grew steadily all year, from 37 to 56 per 1,000 companies. Applied AI spread to somewhat more companies (35 to 49 per 1,000), but those companies posted many more of these jobs: open roles went from 99 to 259. AI Deployment and Solutions peaked at 189 open roles in August and has dipped since. For comparison, Forward Deployed Engineer, which we covered in July, went from 83 to 143 per 1,000 companies.
How each title spread
Companies hiring for each title at the end of each month, November 2025 to October 2026. Each chart has its own scale. Hover over a line to see each month.
New postings show the same trend. Here we counted how many of every 1,000 new job postings used each title. Applied AI went from 3.1 in December to February to 6.8 in August to October. Agent Engineer went from 3.3 to 5.9, and AI Deployment from 3.1 to 5.6. GTM Engineer barely changed (1.8 to 2.1): more companies are hiring for it, but each one usually hires just one. One title dropped sharply. AI Trainer and AI Data Specialist, the people who create training data for AI models, fell from 9.1 to 1.2 per 1,000 new postings. Prompt Engineer, the hot title of 2023, has almost disappeared, with only 36 postings all year.
Share of new postings
Out of every 1,000 new job postings at these companies, how many used each title: December 2025 to February 2026, then August to October 2026.
Who hires for each title tells you what kind of job it is. Agent Engineer is common at big companies, not just startups: 296 companies posted 1,242 Agent Engineer jobs this year, led by Google (215), Amazon (95), NVIDIA (81). GTM Engineer is the opposite. 241 companies posted it, mostly one job each, and the three biggest posters account for only 7% of postings. AI Trainer is the most concentrated: 79% of its postings come from just three companies, Handshake (170), RWS (82), xAI (80).
Who posts each title
How many companies posted each title from November 2025 to October 2026, across every company we track. Next to each title are the three companies with the most postings.
The new titles do not pay much more than the old ones. Looking at US base salaries in job postings for individual contributors, the median is $232K for AI Evals, $219K for Agent Engineer, $213K for Applied AI, and $210K for AI Product Manager. That compares with $205K for Software Engineer and $200K for Product Manager. The plain AI Engineer title pays $200K, less than Software Engineer, and AI Deployment ($186K) pays less than Solutions Engineer ($191K). The biggest pay gap is for GTM Engineer: $165K, compared with $133K for Sales and Revenue Operations.
What the titles pay
US base salary in job postings for individual contributors, November 2025 to October 2026, using the middle of each posted range. AI Trainer jobs are mostly hourly contract work, converted to a yearly amount. Hover over a row to see all six numbers.
Two companion issues look closer at the fastest growers: Agent Engineer, compared with Software Engineer jobs at the same companies, and GTM Engineer, compared with the sales and revenue operations jobs it grew out of.
How we counted: the growth numbers only include companies we have tracked since November 2025. Companies we started tracking later, including big posters like Google, Amazon, Apple, and NVIDIA, are left out of the growth numbers. They are included in the charts of who posts each title and what it pays, which use every company we track. A job that was reposted several times counts once. We match titles by their wording, so a job with a different name (for example, an "AI Agent Developer" listed as a "Software Engineer") is not counted.
Explore the interactive infographic for the full breakdown.
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Source: Timeplot, based on public job postings from the companies we track, spanning top AI labs, AI-adjacent software companies, and startups. Data as of November 1, 2026.