Job ad market observation · September 2026

Who is supposed to bring AI into the company?

We analysed 5,399 job ads to see how companies cut roles that involve AI, and how they expect to recognise who can fill them.

The ads come from marketing, sales, HR, finance and controlling, procurement and supply chain, and project and process management.

Moritz Steinbach · Talentigo

01The scale

In three of a hundred ads, someone is meant to carry AI to others in the company.

AI gets mentioned often. Most of the time it has nothing to do with the work of the person being hired. And even less often with spreading it through the company.

3 in 100 ask someone to carry AI to others in the company: introduce it, evaluate it, set standards.
6 more mean the person in the job, but without that mandate.
6 more mention AI only in the company description, in the application process, or in passing.
85 in 100 do not mention AI at all.
02Where it happens

Marketing mentions AI most often.

Share of ads per function in which AI appears at all.

Marketing36 %
Project and process15 %
HR11 %
Sales10 %
Finance and controlling9 %
Procurement and supply chain9 %

How often AI appears says little about how deep it sits. In marketing it usually stands beside the work as a tool. In project and process management it is far more often at the core of the role.

03How deep AI sits in the role

For most roles, everything stays the way it was.

We assigned each of the 481 ads to one of five levels, ordered by what the mention actually costs the company.

24 %AI is required but not neededThe requirements list AI skills. The tasks never say what for.
26 %One task is addedOne named activity with AI in an otherwise ordinary role. Remove it and a complete job remains.
10 %The work itself is differentAI appears at several points in the tasks and changes how they are described.
33 %AI is to be carried to othersThe person is not only to use AI themselves but to introduce it, evaluate it, roll it out and enable colleagues.
7 %Without AI there is no job leftThe task list consists mostly of work that would not exist without AI.
04The mandate

A third are meant to carry AI to colleagues who do not report to them.

This is the largest group in the data set. It is also the only one in which someone is meant to change other people’s work and not just their own.

Project and process39 %
HR30 %
Finance and controlling24 %
Procurement and supply chain19 %
Sales10 %
Marketing8 %

Marketing mentions AI most often and passes it on least often. In project and process management it is the other way round.

Share of the coded ads mentioning AI within each function. The bars show each value relative to the highest.

05Examples

This is what it sounds like when AI changes the role.

Three sentences from ads in the two upper levels, quoted from the German originals and translated here, without company names.

“You identify use cases for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in HR (e.g. predictive analytics for attrition).”
Director People Analytics & Data · HR
“You implement a new AI-based solution and develop an integrated process for demand and inventory planning.”
Demand Forecasting Expert · Procurement
“Advising the business units on AI-supported optimisation of workflows and business processes.”
AI Process Manager · Project and process
06What gets measured

44 percent ask for experience. One percent asks for evidence.

For each of the 481 ads we recorded how the company decides that someone can handle the AI part.

No criterion at all21 %
Nothing is asked of the person regarding AI.
An attitude24 %
Affinity, interest, curiosity, openness.
Experience44 %
Experience or knowledge, without naming a tool and without evidence.
A named tool10 %
Knowledge of one specific product.
Evidence1 %
Work samples, own projects, references.
07Conclusions

These requirements come from roles that already existed.

Everything up to here was counted. What follows is my own reading of it.

Experience almost nobody could have gathered44 percent ask for experience with AI. The roles in which you could have gathered it are only now being created. Whoever brings it has usually taken the topic on themselves, without it being their job.
A degree that does not exist for thisNo qualification prepares someone to bring AI into an existing company. It is not computer science and it is not business administration either.
No evidenceOne ad in a hundred asks for something to show. At the same time, in a third of these roles the person is meant to enable colleagues and set standards, that is, to change something that does not report to them.

These are the criteria you use to refill an existing job. Not the ones you use to cut a new one.

Offer

Send me your job ad.

You get an assessment back from me. Free, within a few days.

moritz@talentigo.de
A link or an attachment is enough.

  • Where your role sits. Which of the five levels it falls into and how it compares with the other ads.
  • What cannot be checked. Which of your requirements nobody can substantiate in an interview, and why.
  • Three questions for the interview. Questions a candidate has to be able to answer in conversation.
Moritz Steinbach
Moritz Steinbach

AI Lead at HR factory for three years. I am responsible there for how AI is used, from the first assessment and the conversations with employees through building our own tools to the strategy behind it. Co-founder of Talentigo.

To pass on internally: this analysis as a PDF