AI engineers, data-center techs top emerging roles
CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES — Artificial intelligence (AI) engineers have claimed the top spot on LinkedIn’s Jobs on the Rise 2026 ranking, with data-center field technicians also breaking into the list — reflecting the physical and technical infrastructure demands of the AI economy.
According to a report from Staffing Industry Analysts (SIA), four of the top five fastest-growing roles in the United States are directly tied to AI, per LinkedIn data spanning 2023 to 2025.
AI engineer tops LinkedIn’s fastest-growing jobs list
Ali Gohar, chief human resources (HR) officer at Software Finder (softwarefinder.com), said employer demand for AI engineering talent centers on a specific skills profile.
“The most in-demand skills that employers are prioritizing include hands-on programming in Python, familiarity with modern machine learning libraries such as PyTorch and TensorFlow, and the skills required for deploying and managing models in a production environment,” Gohar said.
AI engineer job postings rose 143% year-over-year in 2025, with roles concentrated in San Francisco, New York City, and Dallas. Software engineers, data scientists, and full-stack engineers are among those most likely to transition into AI engineering roles, according to LinkedIn’s analysis.
Four out of the five fastest-growing roles on LinkedIn’s 2026 list are directly tied to AI, signaling a structural shift in the skills the labor market now rewards most.
Data-center technicians emerge as essential AI support roles
“It makes sense that employers are looking for people with expertise in making them run well, inexpensively, and reliably,” Gohar said of the infrastructure demands driving data-center technician hiring.
Data-center field technicians rank 17th on the LinkedIn list, with hiring concentrated in Washington, D.C., Atlanta, and Columbus, Ohio, where major data center buildouts are underway.
Volen Vulkov, co-founder of Enhancv, said the breadth of application programming interface (API) work in the field is just one dimension: “an AI engineer means anything from heavy API consumption to even business solution consulting around bots.”
The emergence of data-center technicians alongside AI engineers on the same fast-growth list confirms that demand spans both the code and the physical infrastructure running it.
For business process outsourcing (BPO) providers, the rise of AI engineers and data-center technicians as top emerging roles represents both a talent pressure point and a service opportunity. Offshore markets — particularly the Philippines, India, and Eastern Europe — are rapidly developing AI engineering talent pipelines the U.S. hiring market cannot fill at pace.
BPO firms that invest in upskilling teams toward AI deployment and data-center support are positioning for the most durable job-growth trend of the decade.
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Disclosure: Outsource Accelerator uses AI tools in the backend of its editorial workflow. Every article is reviewed and verified by a human editor before publication.
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