There are currently around 500,000 open roles globally for AI engineers. The technology’s rapid ascendence over the last three years has vastly outmatched the human resources required to create, maintain and manage it.
Though adoption varies widely by industry, a significant percentage of decision-makers (72%) are planning to invest in AI tools in 2025, according to one of our data.
This has led to fierce competition and exorbitant offers for in-demand talent. Many companies lack sufficient staff to deliver on their ambitions.
VP Strategy & Operations, DeepL.
2025 reports claim that AI has jumped from the sixth most scarce technology skill to the number one source of shortages in the course of just one year.
This isn’t a gap that will be solved quickly, according to experts. Gartner believes that 80% of existing software engineers will need to upskill in AI by 2027 to remain employable.
The World Economic Forum predicts that AI will create many more jobs than it makes obsolete (170 million new roles worldwide versus 92 million roles made redundant), which is good news. But it also begs the question: who will fill those newly created roles around a nascent technology?
Finding experienced, qualified people in a technology area that’s still evolving so rapidly is no mean feat.
Technology has been here before
The technology sector has been impacted by skills shortages for a long time, though, especially in areas like cybersecurity and data management. These shortages are, of course, exacerbated when new, fast-moving technologies are under consideration. But these perennial skills shortages mean that smart software companies have already developed tactics to ensure they are able to meet their needs.
The idea of remote working may still be a relatively new idea for many companies, adopted out of necessity during the pandemic, but it has a long history in the technology sector, arguably starting with five IBM engineers who were asked to ‘telecommute’ in 1979, a program that had expanded to 2,000 personnel by 1983. Today, more than 80% of software developers work remotely all or part of the time.
The possibility of remote working opens doors to international recruitment. Perhaps unfairly, all of the major software development languages are written in English, along with most documentation and tools. Programming is already monolingual, so a developer in Oslo is working with the same tools as one in Osaka.
Opening the door to international contributors brings considerable advantages: a much broader talent pool, more diverse perspectives on problems, round-the-clock availability and productivity, wage flexibility, and more.
Bridging the culture gap
Decentralization and internationalization have allowed many technology companies to build strong, full teams. But it’s not always enough. The competition for remote talent is now as fierce as that for local team members. A capable AI developer with an internet connection might be anywhere in the world and still have lots of options over where and how they work.
The key to winning that competition is often inclusive culture. This can be a missing factor for organizations with international teams. People half-way across the world, or just not in the office, can seem (and feel) invisible. They can be missed out from communications; their continued presence taken for granted.
In cultures built around teamwork, inclusion is vital in attracting and retaining the right talent. Team members expect a sense of purpose from what they do for most of their waking hours. They want to feel they have strong relationships with colleagues and that their point of view is heard.
Building this common culture requires continual, deliberate thought and visible action. Technology has done a great deal to make communication much easier over great distances, but that communication needs to be far more than transactional: giving and receiving instructions. Managers need to seek out opportunities for genuine conversations and actively invite input into priorities, pressure points and other decisions.
With engineering team members dispersed across the globe, there can be potential disconnect from centralized culture, contributing to a diminished sense of belonging. Working very intentionally to create a common, inclusive culture, spanning geographies and languages, needs to be central in any drive towards building a sustainable business.
Fluent in code; fluent in culture
While coding languages are common, that linguistic fluency does not necessarily extend to conversations, emails and IMs. And that is something that must be addressed: if top talent is to join, stay and thrive within a company, they need to really be a part of it.
Meetings, in particular, can leave foreign language contributors feeling excluded. Again, technology can relieve this pain point, with best-in-class solutions able to perform two-way translations almost instantaneously. This type of technology helps create a tailored, local experience for each employee while helping them reach and engage with their peers globally.
The challenge of attracting AI talent is undoubtedly steep, but there are certainly ways to get ahead. Compensation is not the only way to compete; growth, culture and purpose are also incredibly important drivers. Done well, consistently, and company-wide, culture and inclusion can become secret weapons to draw in new team members with critical skills.
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