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Timeplot · Role Signal · Issue 008

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

Companies hiring GTM Engineers

+162%

14 → 37 per 1,000 companies

Companies hiring Agent Engineers

+53%

37 → 56 per 1,000 companies

Open Applied AI roles

99 → 259

November to October

Companies hiring plain AI Engineers

-10%

72 → 65 per 1,000 companies

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.

New title, growing
New title, shrinking
Older title, for comparison
Covered in the July issue
GTM Engineer
14 → 37+162%
Forward Deployed Engineer (July issue)
83 → 143+72%
AI Deployment and Solutions
25 → 42+70%
Agent Engineer
37 → 56+53%
AI Product Manager
29 → 42+47%
Applied AI
35 → 49+40%
AI Evals
12 → 15+22%
Solutions Engineer or Architect
80 → 90+13%
Product Manager
169 → 187+11%
Sales or Revenue Operations
51 → 55+8%
Software Engineer
415 → 388-7%
Machine Learning Engineer
73 → 67-7%
AI Engineer
72 → 65-10%
Prompt or Context Engineer
2.7 → 1.3-50%
AI Trainer and AI Data Specialist
5.3 → 2.0-62%

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.

Growing
Shrinking
Applied AI
35 → 49+40%
AI Deployment and Solutions
25 → 42+70%
Agent Engineer
37 → 56+53%
GTM Engineer
14 → 37+162%
AI Evals
12 → 15+22%
AI Product Manager
29 → 42+47%
AI Engineer
72 → 65-10%
AI Trainer and AI Data Specialist
5.3 → 2.0-62%
Prompt or Context Engineer
2.7 → 1.3-50%

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.

December 2025 to February 2026
August to October 2026
Applied AI
3.1
6.8(+119%)
Agent Engineer
3.3
5.9(+79%)
AI Deployment and Solutions
3.1
5.6(+81%)
AI Product Manager
3.7
4.2(+14%)
AI Engineer
3.1
4.1(+32%)
GTM Engineer
1.8
2.1(+17%)
AI Trainer and AI Data Specialist
9.1
1.2(-87%)
AI Evals
0.6
1.0(+67%)
Prompt or Context Engineer
0.3
0.1(-67%)

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.

New titlesOlder titlesBox: middle half of postingsMedianMeanLowest to highestHighest is off the scale; its value is shown at the end
AI Evals185 postingsmedian $232K
$675K
Machine Learning Engineer953 postingsmedian $228K
$500K
Agent Engineer661 postingsmedian $219K
$675K
Applied AI417 postingsmedian $213K
$550K
AI Product Manager581 postingsmedian $210K
Software Engineer12,395 postingsmedian $205K
$565K
AI Engineer408 postingsmedian $200K
Product Manager3,430 postingsmedian $200K
$490K
Solutions Engineer or Architect1,797 postingsmedian $191K
$900K
AI Deployment and Solutions230 postingsmedian $186K
$650K
GTM Engineer180 postingsmedian $165K
Sales or Revenue Operations299 postingsmedian $133K
AI Trainer and AI Data Specialist257 postingsmedian $114K
$624K
$0K$100K$200K$300K$400K

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.

AI EngineerApple 55 · CI&T 47 · Google 35
405 companies · 934 postings
Agent EngineerGoogle 215 · Amazon 95 · NVIDIA 81
296 companies · 1,242 postings
AI Product ManagerGoogle 180 · Amazon 97 · Microsoft 60
250 companies · 904 postings
GTM EngineerClay 11 · Cursor 6 · Databricks 6
241 companies · 313 postings
Applied AIGoogle 116 · Amazon 96 · Anthropic 84
222 companies · 802 postings
AI Deployment and SolutionsElevenLabs 41 · Amazon 39 · Microsoft 38
204 companies · 635 postings
AI EvalsApple 72 · Waymo 28 · RWS 19
97 companies · 316 postings
Prompt or Context EngineerWelocalize 5 · Anthropic 2 · Cyderes 2
27 companies · 36 postings
AI Trainer and AI Data SpecialistHandshake 170 · RWS 82 · xAI 80
22 companies · 420 postings

What the data says

  • Specific AI titles are growing: Agent Engineer went from 37 to 56 per 1,000 companies, AI Deployment from 25 to 42, and open Applied AI roles from 99 to 259.
  • The plain AI Engineer title is shrinking: 72 of every 1,000 companies were hiring one in November and 65 in October. It also pays less than Software Engineer ($200K vs $205K).
  • GTM Engineer grew fastest, then leveled off: It went from 14 to 33 per 1,000 companies by March and reached 37 by October. Most companies hire just one.
  • Two titles are fading: AI Trainer fell from 9.1 to 1.2 per 1,000 new postings, and Prompt Engineer had only 36 postings all year.

Want recruiting signals like these? Timeplot tracks hiring momentum, freezes, and role shifts across thousands of companies. Get in touch.

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.

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