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What data & AI employers are hiring for, and what they pay

A weekly index built from 13,139 open data, analytics and AI job postings at 3,348 companies, pulled every day from public job-board APIs. Aggregates only.

Week 2026-W42, data as of October 18, 2026Daily snapshots since 2026-10-18 Remote: 37.0% of postings
13,139open data & AI postings
3,348companies hiring for data & AI
5,143postings with published pay (4,399 US, USD)
10,956company job boards tracked daily

This is the first week of the index. Week-over-week changes and new-vs-closed counts appear once there are two weeks of daily snapshots.

Top skills in data & AI job postings

Share of all data & AI postings that mention each skill in the title or description. A vendor's own postings don't count toward its own product.

#SkillShare of data & AI postingsPostingsCompaniesWeek over weekMedian pay (US)
1Python
language
65.5%8,6122,580needs more history$193K
n=2856
2SQL
language
41.4%5,4461,953needs more history$175K
n=1782
3LLMs
genai
35.1%4,6161,791needs more history$210K
n=1619
4APIs / REST
infra
30.8%4,0531,554needs more history$196K
n=1220
5AI agents
genai
30.6%4,0191,583needs more history$208K
n=1366
6AWS
cloud
28.1%3,6951,452needs more history$187K
n=1133
7Statistics
analytics
25.7%3,3731,449needs more history$192K
n=1199
8CI/CD
infra
20.0%2,6271,178needs more history$188K
n=746
9A/B testing & experimentation
analytics
19.5%2,5671,076needs more history$210K
n=943
10Streaming / real-time
concept
18.8%2,4761,077needs more history$207K
n=911
11Data quality
governance
18.7%2,4511,200needs more history$175K
n=813
12Google Cloud
cloud
17.2%2,258931needs more history$189K
n=570
13Azure
cloud
16.1%2,119809needs more history$170K
n=545
14Git
infra
15.7%2,066980needs more history$172K
n=574
15Kubernetes
infra
14.9%1,960891needs more history$202K
n=598
16PyTorch
ml
14.9%1,952850needs more history$215K
n=727
17Generative AI
genai
13.7%1,797720needs more history$200K
n=577
18RAG
genai
13.5%1,773898needs more history$202K
n=523
19Snowflake
platform
13.3%1,741882needs more history$184K
n=646
20Data modeling
concept
13.2%1,739925needs more history$175K
n=558
21Docker / containers
infra
13.0%1,713839needs more history$190K
n=500
22Anthropic Claude
genai
13.0%1,711869needs more history$198K
n=558
23MLOps
mlops
12.4%1,628851needs more history$205K
n=546
24dbt
transformation
12.3%1,615890needs more history$184K
n=594
25ETL / ELT
concept
11.9%1,569823needs more history$167K
n=556
26Apache Spark
processing
11.9%1,567699needs more history$194K
n=553
27TypeScript / JavaScript
language
11.5%1,517768needs more history$200K
n=491
28Apache Airflow
orchestration
11.5%1,516805needs more history$192K
n=489
29Databricks
platform
11.3%1,482601needs more history$184K
n=452
30Data warehousing
concept
11.0%1,444781needs more history$170K
n=498
31Fine-tuning
genai
10.5%1,378720needs more history$228K
n=463
32Terraform / IaC
infra
10.2%1,342732needs more history$195K
n=378
33Data catalog & lineage
governance
10.0%1,317733needs more history$189K
n=476
34Deep learning
ml
9.7%1,272594needs more history$215K
n=500
35LLM evaluation
genai
9.5%1,248689needs more history$220K
n=489
36TensorFlow
ml
8.9%1,168555needs more history$207K
n=415
37Tableau
bi
8.7%1,146632needs more history$148K
n=400
38Vector databases
genai
8.7%1,145586needs more history$202K
n=335
39OpenAI API
genai
8.7%1,144581needs more history$212K
n=397
40Data governance
governance
8.7%1,141599needs more history$174K
n=366

All 150 skills →

Data platforms

Databricks vs Snowflake vs BigQuery vs Fabric and more.

#SkillShare of data & AI postingsPostingsCompaniesWeek over week
1Snowflake
platform
13.3%1,741882needs more history
2Databricks
platform
11.3%1,482601needs more history
3BigQuery
platform
8.4%1,106576needs more history
4Amazon Redshift
platform
4.5%585377needs more history
5ClickHouse
platform
1.7%228144needs more history
6Microsoft Fabric
platform
1.0%13682needs more history
7Azure Synapse
platform
0.9%11573needs more history
8Trino / Starburst
platform
0.8%10668needs more history
9Presto
platform
0.4%5941needs more history
10Druid / Pinot
platform
0.3%4229needs more history
11Teradata
platform
0.1%1810needs more history

Generative AI skills

LLMs, RAG, agents, vector databases.

#SkillShare of data & AI postingsPostingsCompaniesWeek over week
1LLMs
genai
35.1%4,6161,791needs more history
2AI agents
genai
30.6%4,0191,583needs more history
3Generative AI
genai
13.7%1,797720needs more history
4RAG
genai
13.5%1,773898needs more history
5Anthropic Claude
genai
13.0%1,711869needs more history
6Fine-tuning
genai
10.5%1,378720needs more history
7LLM evaluation
genai
9.5%1,248689needs more history
8Vector databases
genai
8.7%1,145586needs more history
9OpenAI API
genai
8.7%1,144581needs more history
10Embeddings
genai
7.9%1,039570needs more history
11LangChain / LangGraph
genai
7.1%939500needs more history
12Model Context Protocol
genai
6.7%885516needs more history
13Prompt engineering
genai
6.4%847516needs more history
14vLLM / inference serving
genai
3.9%511300needs more history
15Google Gemini
genai
2.9%375215needs more history

Roles

Data & AI roles, classified from job titles.

RolePostingsShareMedian pay (US)
AI Engineer3,77728.7%$208K
n=1093
Machine Learning Engineer1,97715.0%$222K
n=795
Data Engineer1,77813.5%$172K
n=516
Data Scientist1,53711.7%$190K
n=567
Data Analyst1,1298.6%$130K
n=270
Data & AI leadership1,0638.1%$215K
n=469
AI Research Scientist4363.3%$240K
n=173
Data Architect3973.0%$199K
n=134
Analytics Engineer3702.8%$175K
n=130
Database Engineer / DBA3042.3%$140K
n=124
Data Governance & Quality2211.7%$155K
n=78
BI Developer / Analyst1501.1%$130K
n=50

Pay by level

LevelPostingsMedian pay (US)n with pay
Intern224$108K19
Entry / junior144$112K35
Mid (II)170$153K73
Senior3,646$190K1162
Staff / lead1,686$235K754
Principal410$235K162
Manager722$198K288
Director+485$230K250
Level not stated5,652$178K1656

Median of published range midpoints, US postings in USD; “—” when fewer than 10 postings have pay.

New vs closed postings

needs more history Weekly new-vs-closed counts start once two weeks of daily snapshots exist (first snapshot: 2026-10-18).

The weekly Data Skills Index

What moved this week: rising and falling skills, pay by skill and level, new vs closed data & AI roles. Free, one email a week.

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