The AI Boom in Leadership Roles Spans Organizations from a Wide Variety of Industries
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Overall AI-related positions across industries have tripled in just two years (37,078 in Q2 2022 vs. 111,341 in Q2 2024), with leadership titles also tripling in this same time period
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AI titles in the C-suite have seen the most dramatic increase (428% since Q2 2022)
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Generative AI titles are nearly 250 times more common than just two years ago
ZoomInfo , the go-to-market platform to find, acquire, and grow customers, released a new report showing AI leadership titles have seen triple-digit growth in just two years. The companies and organizations that are installing top-tier leaders with an explicit AI focus span a wide variety of industries and sectors, illustrating how critical AI technology has become in organizational strategy, leadership, and decision making.
“The growth of artificial intelligence in the last few years is staggering, and we will continue to see this emerging trend of companies creating more roles in leadership to leverage this technology,” said Brandon Tucker, Chief Data Officer for ZoomInfo. “At ZoomInfo, we are meeting this demand by placing leaders with AI expertise in management positions to create and oversee our own AI-powered solution, ZoomInfo Copilot. Applying AI to our massive data set has allowed us to create significant value for sales and marketing teams across the globe.”
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According to two years’ worth of data collected by ZoomInfo, companies across industries and sectors appear to be making considerable investments in top-down leadership to guide the successful application of AI. While generative AI technologies have driven the most recent wave of interest and investment, most of the overall job titles in AI still focus on broad-based disciplines such as engineering – an indication that employers of all kinds are building the core infrastructure that can make AI products and services that drive sustained growth.
Key trends include:
- Overall AI-related positions across industries have tripled in just two years (37,078 in Q2 2022 vs. 111,341 in Q2 2024)
- AI leadership titles are 3x more prevalent than two years ago (3,731 in Q2 2022 vs. 10,875 in Q2 2024)
- Managers: up 174% (1,894 vs. 5,208)
- Directors: up 197% (1,264 vs. 3,765)
- Vice Presidents: up 199% (492 vs. 1,474)
- Chief/C-Suite: up 428% (81 vs. 428)
- “Generative AI” job titles are nearly 250 times more common than just two years ago
- “Generative AI” represents 3% of all AI-related job titles in 2024 (3,719 out of 111,341 AI titles)
- A significant spike occurred in the second half of 2023 and first half of 2024, with no signs of slowing (15 positions with “Generative AI” in the title in Q2 2022, to 265 in Q2 2023, to 3,719 in Q2 2024)
- “Engineer” remains the most common term (43%) associated with AI-specific job titles, followed by similar technical disciplines such as “Researcher,” “Scientist,” “Specialist,” and “Developer”
- “AI Engineer,” “AI Researcher,” and “AI Scientist” are three of the most popular titles in the field at this time
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Notable companies with AI titled leadership roles include Accenture, Amazon, Boeing, the CIA, Dell, Equifax, HP, IBM, Intel, Metlife, Microsoft, Northrup Grumman, Oracle, Southwest Airlines, T-Mobile, UnitedHealth Group, U.S. Dept of Defense, Wayfair, Wells Fargo, and more.