Generative AI going mainstream has prompted more and more people to tailor their resumes and tweak their LinkedIn profiles. Since January 2016, the share of Indians who have added AI skills to their LinkedIn profiles has seen a 14x uptick, highlighted a latest report by the professional networking platform.

The Indian economy contributes to the landscape with a workforce of  a massive 47 lakh techies. But even the world’s most ‘techie-populous’ nation has started to run out of the demanding AI workforce. While at present 416,000 professionals are engaged in AI and data science in India, a Nasscom report exposed a gaping demand for 213,000 more professionals, predicted to worsen in the next couple of years. The World Economic Forum’s recent report adds that India’s job landscape will shift by 22% in the next five years, largely due to emerging AI roles.  

Searches > Posting

While the Indian economy grapples with the talent crunch, companies are ready to pay AI experts enough to retire early. 

Job postings for GenAI roles surged 50% from July 2022 to July 2023 on Indeed, a job-hunt platform, according to Insider. Searches for these positions skyrocketed by 12,300% during the same period, highlighting the growing interest. Bangalore, often called the Silicon Valley of India, offers the highest salaries for ML experts, as per upGrad. In contrast, Chennai’s average ML salaries are 5% lower than the national average. 

Companies like HyperVerge, Razorthink, IQVIA, are paying a handful of lakhs for machine learning engineer posts. Data analysts with programming skills can get the highest salary among data scientists in India as per upGrad. Computer vision engineers are being paid up to INR 21 lakh. Furthermore, an AI researcher’s salary in India ranges between INR 3.0 lakh to 35.0 lakh with an average of INR 9.0 lakh. Other roles like deep learning engineer, AI product manager and AI consultants have also seen a demand surge in the job market. 

On the global payscale, some of these jobs, such as an AI-focused product-manager role at Netflix paying $900,000 a year, come with compensation well into the six figures. Other companies like Amazon, Google, Goldman Sachs etc are also willing to pay top dollars for AI/ML experts well-versed with frameworks and language models. 

Huge pay for AI skills isn’t new. Back in 2017, Tom Eck, then CTO of industry platforms at IBM, made a statement that top-tier AI researchers “are getting paid the salaries of NFL quarterbacks, which tells you the demand and the perceived value”.

GenAI In-Demand

Overall, the number of job listings referencing GPT or ChatGPT on LinkedIn has grown 21-fold since ChatGPT’s debut in November 2022. Not only are job postings increasing, but members on the platform globally are adding AI skills to their profiles more than ever before. The report covered 25 countries and tracked 121 AI skills highlighting noteworthy trends. In 2022, among the swiftly growing AI-related skills added to user profiles, all top five skills were “hinting at the emergence of generative AI”. These included abilities like question-answering, which saw an impressive 332% increase, as well as classification and recommender systems.

Likewise, Microsoft’s 2023 Work Trend Index identified three essential skills by industry leaders: analytical judgment, flexibility, and emotional intelligence.

LinkedIn has also shown an increased emphasis on AI. Since April, posts about generative AI have risen by 25% monthly. Profiles mentioning specific GenAI keywords, such as “GAI”, “ChatGPT”, “Prompt Engineering”, and “Prompt Crafting”, have surged by 75% per month since the start of the year. Owned by Microsoft, LinkedIn also introduced features in May enabling users to generate AI-based recruiter messages, job descriptions, and user profiles.

In theory, currently the estimation of AI job roles is proliferating the same as the rate of adoption of the content creating technology. With the surge in demand, candidates need to upskill with the knowledge of the core programming languages, frameworks, and abstract concepts as the industry evolves.