Second Talent flags 10 new AI engineering roles for 2026

By AI, Created 5:17 PM UTC, May 18, 2026, /AGP/ – Second Talent’s new 2026 report says AI Agent Engineer is the fastest-growing new role, and that companies shipping AI features now need a stack of specialist hires, not one generalist. The findings point to a widening skills gap and growing demand across Asia, where Second Talent says AI hiring has accelerated sharply.

Why it matters: - Second Talent’s 2026 report says AI hiring is moving from one generalist role to a set of specialist engineering jobs. - The shift matters because companies shipping AI features in 2026 need different skills for automation, retrieval, operations, safety and product management. - The report also points to Asia as a growing hiring market for these roles, with a cost advantage over the U.S.

What happened: - Second Talent released its 2026 New AI Roles Report on May 13, 2026. - The report identifies 10 engineering job titles that did not exist in any stable form three years ago and are now core hires for companies shipping AI features. - Second Talent based the report on placement data from its network of more than 100,000 vetted engineers across nine Asian markets, plus public research from the World Economic Forum, Stack Overflow, GitHub, Dice, Anthropic and CompTIA. - The report says AI Agent Engineer is the fastest-growing role of 2026.

The details: - The 10 roles listed in the report are AI Automation Engineer, Workflow Automation Engineer, Prompt Engineer, LLM Engineer, AI Agent Engineer, RAG Engineer, AI Solutions Architect, LLMOps Engineer, AI Product Manager and AI Safety / Red Team Engineer. - AI Automation Engineer and Workflow Automation Engineer emerged in 2023. - Prompt Engineer emerged in 2023 and focuses on prompt design and evaluation suites. - LLM Engineer emerged in 2023 and integrates and ships LLM features in production. - AI Agent Engineer emerged in 2024 and posted 240% growth in 2025. - RAG Engineer emerged in 2024 and owns retrieval pipelines and vector databases. - AI Solutions Architect emerged in 2024 and owns AI strategy and model governance. - LLMOps Engineer emerged in 2024 and handles prompts, evals and model versions with CI/CD discipline. - AI Product Manager emerged in 2023 and runs probabilistic product roadmaps and evals. - AI Safety / Red Team Engineer emerged in 2024 and handles adversarial testing and AI compliance. - Second Talent says a Series B company shipping AI features in 2026 needs four to six of these roles, not one generalist AI Engineer. - The report says the Asia-U.S. senior cost gap is 71%. - The report says U.S. AI compensation has risen 30% to 50% in 18 months, while Asia salaries have not kept pace. - Second Talent says the most common hiring mistake is bringing on a Prompt Engineer or AI Solutions Architect too early. - Second Talent says seed-stage teams need an LLM Engineer first. - Second Talent says its 90-day retention rate for AI roles placed in 2025 to 2026 is 96%, compared with an industry average of 84%. - Second Talent’s placement data shows AI hiring volume across its Asia network grew four times year over year in 2025. - AI Automation Engineer and AI Agent Engineer roles together accounted for 38% of all 2025 placements.

Between the lines: - The report suggests AI hiring is splitting into narrower specialties as products move from prototypes to production. - The data also suggests companies may be over-indexing on titles that look strategic too early, while under-hiring the production engineers needed first. - The Asia hiring angle reflects a broader search for senior talent outside the U.S. as compensation pressures climb. - The report’s framing implies that teams winning with AI are scaling headcount by function, not cutting headcount through automation.

What’s next: - Second Talent says the full report is available at the company’s announcement. - Companies hiring for any of the 10 roles can request a 24-hour shortlist at request a shortlist. - Second Talent says demand for specialist AI engineers is likely to keep rising as more companies ship AI features in production.

The bottom line: - The AI hiring market is maturing fast, and Second Talent’s report says the winning teams will be the ones that hire for specific AI functions, not generic labels.