Home / AI Engineer Skills 2026
What 198 top AI companies actually want in AI engineers
We analyzed 3,647 open AI-engineering roles at companies from OpenAI and Anthropic to Waymo, Anduril, and Stripe — and ranked the skills, tools, and responsibilities by how many companies mention them. Not opinions. Job descriptions.
3,647job postings analyzed
198companies, labs to robotics
92skills, tools & duties ranked
Read this first — what this data is
These are keyword mentions in AI-engineering-adjacent job-board listings, not verified hard requirements. The cohort skews senior (junior titles are rare on these boards), mixes role families (~a quarter are forward-deployed/solutions roles), and covers only companies with accessible job-board APIs — Meta is the largest absence. Treat the ranking as market breadth, not a checklist.
By Saurav Sharma (CloudYeti) · data collected 2026-08-05 · download the aggregates (JSON) · salary breakdown
Turn the ranking into your readiness map
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Five things the data says
- LLM work is now table stakes, not a specialty. Python and LLMs each appear at 83% of the 198 companies — including robotics, fintech, and consumer tech, not just labs.
- "AI engineer" mostly means product engineer who ships models. APIs/backend (82%), agents (81%), and observability (78%) all outrank classic ML topics like distributed training (35%).
- Evals beat RAG. Evals/benchmarking shows up at 68% of companies; RAG at 40%. Most interview-prep content has this backwards.
- The customer-facing AI engineer is the biggest single role pool. Forward-deployed/solutions language appears at 69% of companies and in 1,200+ postings — the largest posting count of any topic.
- The Claude API out-mentions the OpenAI API — 75 vs 51 companies — and agent frameworks (LangChain 46, Ray 45, Cursor 43 companies) are now named in job requirements, not just blog posts.
Skills & concepts
What you need to know: concepts, platforms, and engineering fundamentals.
1Python 165/198 · 83%
Appears in postings at 165 of 198 companies (2065 postings). Most postings at:
databricksappleandurilnvidiaopenaiadobeamazonapplied-intuitionpalantirgooglemicrosoftwaymo
2LLMs 165/198 · 83%
Appears in postings at 165 of 198 companies (1486 postings). Most postings at:
amazonnvidiaappleanthropicopenaiadobescaleaiwaymodatabricksgooglemicrosoftsnowflake
Prep for it: interview questions.3APIs / backend services 162/198 · 82%
Appears in postings at 162 of 198 companies (1136 postings). Most postings at:
databricksopenaiadobeappleamazonanthropicdeepgrammongodbscaleainebiusandurilnvidia
4Agents 160/198 · 81%
Appears in postings at 160 of 198 companies (1348 postings). Most postings at:
amazondatabricksadobeapplenvidiaopenaimicrosoftscaleaiandurildecagonsierrashield-ai
Prep for it: interview questions.5Observability / monitoring 154/198 · 78%
Appears in postings at 154 of 198 companies (1038 postings). Most postings at:
amazonadobedatadogdatabricksmicrosoftopenaigrafananvidiaappleworkdaycerebrasanduril
6Customer-facing / forward-deployed 136/198 · 69%
Appears in postings at 136 of 198 companies (1212 postings). Most postings at:
databricksopenaipalantirscaleaimongodbcognitionnebiusdecagonelevenlabsgitlabwizamazon
Prep for it: interview questions.7Evals / benchmarking 135/198 · 68%
Appears in postings at 135 of 198 companies (693 postings). Most postings at:
openaiadobenvidiaanthropicappleamazonscaleainebiuswaymowayvelangchaindatabricks
Prep for it: interview questions.8Security 123/198 · 62%
Appears in postings at 123 of 198 companies (1032 postings). Most postings at:
andurilopenaimicrosoftamazonapplied-intuitionpalantirdatabrickssnowflakegooglescaleaiwizadobe
9Distributed systems 123/198 · 62%
Appears in postings at 123 of 198 companies (698 postings). Most postings at:
amazonanthropicdatabricksappleadobeandurilmongodbopenaiwaymogooglenvidiatemporal
10AWS 120/198 · 61%
Appears in postings at 120 of 198 companies (847 postings). Most postings at:
databricksamazonadobescaleaiwizappleworkdaynebiussnowflakeanthropiclovablemotional
Prep for it: interview questions.11Data pipelines / ETL 119/198 · 60%
Appears in postings at 119 of 198 companies (801 postings). Most postings at:
databricksappleamazonsnowflakeadobemongodbnvidiadecagonredditmotionalnebiusnetflix
Prep for it: interview questions.12TypeScript / React frontend 119/198 · 60%
Appears in postings at 119 of 198 companies (578 postings). Most postings at:
databricksopenaipalantirscaleaicognitionlovabletemporaldeepgramlangchainworkdayadobeapple
13Kubernetes 119/198 · 60%
Appears in postings at 119 of 198 companies (565 postings). Most postings at:
nebiusadobenvidiascaleaiapplemongodbanthropiccoreweavecohereapplied-intuitiondatadogdeepgram
Prep for it: interview questions.14Inference optimization 113/198 · 57%
Appears in postings at 113 of 198 companies (541 postings). Most postings at:
nvidiaamazonnebiusadobeopenaidatabricksanthropicapplecerebrasapplied-intuitioncoreweavereddit
15SQL / databases 108/198 · 55%
Appears in postings at 108 of 198 companies (580 postings). Most postings at:
databrickssnowflakeapplemongodbpinterestlovablemicrosoftadobeopenaisalesforcescaleaipalantir
16PyTorch 107/198 · 54%
Appears in postings at 107 of 198 companies (656 postings). Most postings at:
nvidiaappleadobewaymodatabricksamazonnebiusredditmotionalapplied-intuitiongooglezoox
Prep for it: interview questions.17CI/CD 107/198 · 54%
Appears in postings at 107 of 198 companies (508 postings). Most postings at:
databricksadobeamazongitlablovableshield-aiappleopenaiapplied-intuitionnvidiaworkdayanduril
Prep for it: interview questions.18MLOps / ML platform 101/198 · 51%
Appears in postings at 101 of 198 companies (537 postings). Most postings at:
databricksgoogleadobewaymonebiusappleamazonnvidiaredditsnowflakenetflixmotional
Prep for it: interview questions.19Fine-tuning 100/198 · 51%
Appears in postings at 100 of 198 companies (473 postings). Most postings at:
appleadobeamazondatabricksnvidiagooglenebiusopenaiscaleaiwaymoanthropicmicrosoft
Prep for it: interview questions.20GCP 98/198 · 49%
Appears in postings at 98 of 198 companies (614 postings). Most postings at:
databricksgooglescaleaiwizadobesnowflakelovableanthropicapplenebiusworkdaywriter
Prep for it: interview questions.21Safety / alignment 95/198 · 48%
Appears in postings at 95 of 198 companies (508 postings). Most postings at:
microsoftanthropicadobeamazoncoreweavemongodbdatabricksopenaidatadoggitlabwaymoapple
22Docker / containers 93/198 · 47%
Appears in postings at 93 of 198 companies (362 postings). Most postings at:
applied-intuitionadobescaleaiappledockershield-aidatadogworkdaydeepgramnebiusandurilanthropic
23Vector DBs / embeddings 87/198 · 44%
Appears in postings at 87 of 198 companies (359 postings). Most postings at:
applesierraadobeopenaiscaleaidatabricksmongodbamazonredditcloudflareelasticinstacart
24Computer vision 84/198 · 42%
Appears in postings at 84 of 198 companies (487 postings). Most postings at:
appleanduriladobenvidiawaymoamazongoogleapplied-intuitionmicrosoftskydiozooxscaleai
25RAG 80/198 · 40%
Appears in postings at 80 of 198 companies (364 postings). Most postings at:
adobeappledatabricksnvidiaamazonworkdaymicrosoftmongodbcrestanebiusdratasnowflake
Prep for it: interview questions.26RLHF / RL 79/198 · 40%
Appears in postings at 79 of 198 companies (347 postings). Most postings at:
anthropicgoogleamazonwaymonvidiascaleaiapplenebiuspinterestfireworks-aihelsingmicrosoft
Prep for it: interview questions.27Azure 78/198 · 39%
Appears in postings at 78 of 198 companies (552 postings). Most postings at:
databricksmicrosoftadobescaleaiwiznebiussnowflakedatadogapplewritercloudflarecohere
Prep for it: interview questions.28Prompt engineering 76/198 · 38%
Appears in postings at 76 of 198 companies (272 postings). Most postings at:
adobeappledecagonamazonsalesforcecrestamicrosoftdratalangchainharveynotionnvidia
Prep for it: interview questions.29TensorFlow 74/198 · 37%
Appears in postings at 74 of 198 companies (369 postings). Most postings at:
applewaymonvidiaredditgoogleadobenebiusamazondatabricksworkdaymicrosofttenstorrent
30Terraform / IaC 73/198 · 37%
Appears in postings at 73 of 198 companies (225 postings). Most postings at:
wizlovablenebiusdatadogscaleaitogether-ailangchainattentivecloudflareopenaiappleastronomer
Prep for it: interview questions.31Distributed training 70/198 · 35%
Appears in postings at 70 of 198 companies (244 postings). Most postings at:
nvidiawaymoamazonanthropicadobeandurilcoheremotionalnebiusapplefigurereddit
Prep for it: interview questions.32Go / Rust systems 69/198 · 35%
Appears in postings at 69 of 198 companies (270 postings). Most postings at:
andurildeepgramhelsingtemporalapplelovablepalantircloudflarenvidiaopenaiperplexityamazon
33NLP 62/198 · 31%
Appears in postings at 62 of 198 companies (212 postings). Most postings at:
applegoogleamazonadobemicrosoftpinterestcohereworkdaydeepgramotter-aiairbnbcoinbase
34Data labeling / annotation 59/198 · 30%
Appears in postings at 59 of 198 companies (165 postings). Most postings at:
amazonapplescaleaiwaymografananvidiaadobemercorzooxaffirmgooglenuro
35CUDA / GPU kernels 58/198 · 29%
Appears in postings at 58 of 198 companies (240 postings). Most postings at:
nvidianebiusadobetogether-aiamazonmotionalwayvezooxappleandurilcerebrascoreweave
36Model context protocol (MCP) 57/198 · 29%
Appears in postings at 57 of 198 companies (156 postings). Most postings at:
applescaleaiadobedockerdratanvidiaamazonanthropicclickhouseopenaisalesforcebox
37JAX 52/198 · 26%
Appears in postings at 52 of 198 companies (212 postings). Most postings at:
waymoapplenvidiaamazongoogleanthropicadobemotionalcoheretenstorrentnebiusnuro
38Speech / audio ML 23/198 · 12%
Appears in postings at 23 of 198 companies (56 postings). Most postings at:
deepgramnvidiaappleotter-aiamazonhumecrestaduolingoretellrimetogether-ai1x
39Scaling laws / research infra 22/198 · 11%
Appears in postings at 22 of 198 companies (52 postings). Most postings at:
waymonvidiaanthropicsynthesiaopenaicerebrascoheredatabricksfigureappledeepgramfirecrawl
Tools & frameworks (top 40 of 128 found)
Named tools that appear in the postings — languages, AI frameworks (LangChain, Ray, vLLM), data stack, and the model APIs themselves.
1C++ 85/198 · 43%
Appears in postings at 85 of 198 companies (856 postings). Most postings at:
andurilnvidiaapplied-intuitionshield-aiamazonapplewaymogooglepalantirmicrosoftmotionalmongodb
2Claude / Anthropic API 75/198 · 38%
Appears in postings at 75 of 198 companies (287 postings). Most postings at:
anthropicadobeintercomappledatabricksapplied-intuitiondratawriternebiussalesforceamazonclickhouse
3Java 74/198 · 37%
Appears in postings at 74 of 198 companies (498 postings). Most postings at:
databricksamazonpalantirapplemicrosoftmongodbadobegooglesnowflaketemporalnetflixsalesforce
4JavaScript 63/198 · 32%
Appears in postings at 63 of 198 companies (337 postings). Most postings at:
databricksopenaipalantirmicrosoftdatadogintercomgooglecloudflarescaleaiandurildeepgrampostman
5Linux 59/198 · 30%
Appears in postings at 59 of 198 companies (252 postings). Most postings at:
andurilshield-aiapplied-intuitionnvidiamicrosoftamazonotter-aicerebrasnebiuspalantird-matrixintel
6Spark 52/198 · 26%
Appears in postings at 52 of 198 companies (337 postings). Most postings at:
databricksapplesnowflakeamazonredditadobepalantirpinterestnetflixstripeattentivefaire
7OpenAI API 51/198 · 26%
Appears in postings at 51 of 198 companies (258 postings). Most postings at:
openaidatabricksnebiusdratascaleaiadobefiguregrafananvidiatemporalanyscalearize
8Postgres 50/198 · 25%
Appears in postings at 50 of 198 companies (131 postings). Most postings at:
openaigitlabmicrosoftpalantiradobelangchainworkdayattentiveelasticscaleaivannevar-labslovable
9Kafka 47/198 · 24%
Appears in postings at 47 of 198 companies (153 postings). Most postings at:
databricksmongodbappleredditadobeairbnbfaireklaviyootter-aisalesforceworkdayanduril
10LangChain 46/198 · 23%
Appears in postings at 46 of 198 companies (130 postings). Most postings at:
databricksapplelangchainadobeamazonnvidiadratanebiuscoreweavealphasensesalesforcesnowflake
11Ray 45/198 · 23%
Appears in postings at 45 of 198 companies (111 postings). Most postings at:
redditanyscaleapplecoreweavenebiusadobemotionalspotifywaymozooxcoherecrusoe
12Cursor 43/198 · 22%
Appears in postings at 43 of 198 companies (120 postings). Most postings at:
cursorpinterestapplied-intuitionsalesforceadobenvidiawriteraffirmcognitiondatabrickshebbiamicrosoft
13Modal 43/198 · 22%
Appears in postings at 43 of 198 companies (115 postings). Most postings at:
waymogooglemodalamazonappledecagonzooxheygenadobeapplied-intuitionnvidiaroblox
14Airflow 42/198 · 21%
Appears in postings at 42 of 198 companies (102 postings). Most postings at:
appleredditastronomerandurilattentivefairesnowflakeadobeaffirmairbnbinstacartlyft
15Node.js 40/198 · 20%
Appears in postings at 40 of 198 companies (104 postings). Most postings at:
mongodbdratanotionclickhousegranolaretellscaleaiadobedatabricksapplefactoryvannevar-labs
16Bash/shell 40/198 · 20%
Appears in postings at 40 of 198 companies (103 postings). Most postings at:
applied-intuitionshield-aiapplenvidiacloudflarepalantirwizcrusoevantacoinbased-matrixnebius
17Claude Code 39/198 · 20%
Appears in postings at 39 of 198 companies (103 postings). Most postings at:
intercomanthropicapplied-intuitionadobeapplenvidiasalesforcewriteraffirmdatabrickshebbiamicrosoft
18TensorRT 38/198 · 19%
Appears in postings at 38 of 198 companies (144 postings). Most postings at:
nvidianebiusadobeamazontogether-aicoreweavezooxfireworks-aiandurilapplebasetencerebras
19vLLM 38/198 · 19%
Appears in postings at 38 of 198 companies (141 postings). Most postings at:
nvidianebiusamazoncoreweavetogether-aibasetenfireworks-aiadobecerebrassambanovacrusoemodal
20NVIDIA (hardware) 37/198 · 19%
Appears in postings at 37 of 198 companies (214 postings). Most postings at:
nvidianebiusadobenuroapplied-intuitionbasetencoreweaveamazonopenaitemporaltogether-aiwayve
21Snowflake 37/198 · 19%
Appears in postings at 37 of 198 companies (131 postings). Most postings at:
snowflakesalesforceapplefairedatabricksgrafanaastronomerinstacartadobeshield-aiaffirmblock
22NVIDIA Triton 34/198 · 17%
Appears in postings at 34 of 198 companies (102 postings). Most postings at:
nvidiaadobenebiustogether-aicoreweavemicrosoftmotionalwayvecerebrasintercomwaymoamazon
23Triton (kernel lang / inference server) 34/198 · 17%
Appears in postings at 34 of 198 companies (102 postings). Most postings at:
nvidiaadobenebiustogether-aicoreweavemicrosoftmotionalwayvecerebrasintercomwaymoamazon
24Grafana 32/198 · 16%
Appears in postings at 32 of 198 companies (107 postings). Most postings at:
grafanalovableadobelangchaincoreweavesierraworkdaywriterwayveapplecerebrasd-matrix
25Prometheus 32/198 · 16%
Appears in postings at 32 of 198 companies (62 postings). Most postings at:
adobelangchaincoreweavesierraappleastronomercerebrasd-matrixhelsingnvidiatogether-aiwayve
26Databricks 31/198 · 16%
Appears in postings at 31 of 198 companies (344 postings). Most postings at:
databrickssalesforcesnowflakemicrosoftadobegrafanaastronomerfaireshield-aistripezooxapple
27GitHub Copilot 31/198 · 16%
Appears in postings at 31 of 198 companies (98 postings). Most postings at:
microsoftpinterestapplied-intuitionsalesforcescaleaiclickhousewriteradobeshield-aiworkdayblockdatadog
28Temporal 31/198 · 16%
Appears in postings at 31 of 198 companies (85 postings). Most postings at:
temporalapplied-intuitionwaymoapplesynthesiadratalovablemercorscaleaizooxadobeastronomer
29Salesforce 31/198 · 16%
Appears in postings at 31 of 198 companies (81 postings). Most postings at:
salesforcedockercrestawizboxcloudflareharveyretelldatabricksdeepgramgitlabgrafana
30Hugging Face 31/198 · 16%
Appears in postings at 31 of 198 companies (78 postings). Most postings at:
databricksadobenvidiaappleattentivewaymoalphasensecrestanebiusredditscaleaitwilio
31SGLang 30/198 · 15%
Appears in postings at 30 of 198 companies (95 postings). Most postings at:
nvidianebiusamazontogether-aifireworks-aicerebrasbasetenmodaladobecoreweaved-matrixetched
32LangGraph 30/198 · 15%
Appears in postings at 30 of 198 companies (75 postings). Most postings at:
langchainadobedratanvidiavannevar-labsapplearizecoinbasegoogletwilioaffirmamazon
33Gemini 29/198 · 15%
Appears in postings at 29 of 198 companies (65 postings). Most postings at:
googledatabricksadobesalesforceappleextendretellwaymocoinbasegrafanamongodbzoox
34Redis 27/198 · 14%
Appears in postings at 27 of 198 companies (60 postings). Most postings at:
langchainattentiveapplegitlabredditadobeklaviyootter-aiworkdaychimehebbiakrea
35Dbt 26/198 · 13%
Appears in postings at 26 of 198 companies (38 postings). Most postings at:
snowflakeastronomerinstacartaffirmdatabricksdeepgramadobeapplechimeclickhousecognitioncursor
36S3 25/198 · 13%
Appears in postings at 25 of 198 companies (56 postings). Most postings at:
amazonpalantirfairedatabricksapplevannevar-labsagility-roboticscoreweavedeepgramdratafactoryhebbia
37OpenAI Codex 24/198 · 12%
Appears in postings at 24 of 198 companies (94 postings). Most postings at:
openaipinterestnvidiaadobeappletemporalbasetendatabricksgrafanamicrosoftsalesforcewriter
38Elasticsearch 24/198 · 12%
Appears in postings at 24 of 198 companies (68 postings). Most postings at:
elasticamazonadobedatabricksotter-aiastronomerhebbiaheygennvidiascaleaiboxclickhouse
39Excel 24/198 · 12%
Appears in postings at 24 of 198 companies (64 postings). Most postings at:
elevenlabsopenaiappleanthropiccohereamazonotter-aiadobeandurilassemblyaiastraniscerebras
40Slurm 24/198 · 12%
Appears in postings at 24 of 198 companies (62 postings). Most postings at:
nebiusnvidiacoreweavetogether-aicrusoecohered-matrixdeepgramnuroperplexityphysical-intelligenceadobe
Responsibilities
What the job actually is, in the postings' own words — this is what behavioral interview questions are made from.
1Own work end-to-end 183/198 · 92%
Appears in postings at 183 of 198 companies (2467 postings). Most postings at:
databricksopenaiamazonandurilmicrosoftappleadobeanthropicnvidiascaleaipalantirdecagon
2Rapid prototyping and iteration 176/198 · 89%
Appears in postings at 176 of 198 companies (1736 postings). Most postings at:
databricksamazonopenaiappleanduriladobenvidiaapplied-intuitionwaymomicrosoftscaleaizoox
3Evaluate and improve model quality 173/198 · 87%
Appears in postings at 173 of 198 companies (1480 postings). Most postings at:
amazondatabricksadobeopenaiapplenvidiaanthropicmicrosoftgoogleshield-aiscaleaiwaymo
4Cross-functional collaboration 169/198 · 85%
Appears in postings at 169 of 198 companies (1976 postings). Most postings at:
databricksopenaiandurilamazonappleadobeshield-aiwaymoapplied-intuitionscaleaianthropicnvidia
5Write design docs / RFCs 168/198 · 85%
Appears in postings at 168 of 198 companies (1358 postings). Most postings at:
databricksamazonopenaishield-aiapplied-intuitiongooglemicrosoftnvidiaadobemongodbwriterdatadog
6Work directly with customers 167/198 · 84%
Appears in postings at 167 of 198 companies (1833 postings). Most postings at:
databricksopenaiandurilamazonmicrosoftshield-aipalantirapplied-intuitionscaleaigoogleapplewriter
7Scale systems and optimize performance 156/198 · 79%
Appears in postings at 156 of 198 companies (1251 postings). Most postings at:
amazonnvidiadatabricksopenaiadobeanthropicapplewaymonebiusscaleaigooglesierra
8Production operations / on-call 152/198 · 77%
Appears in postings at 152 of 198 companies (1068 postings). Most postings at:
openaiamazonandurilscaleaianthropicapplesierradatabricksdatadogmicrosoftpalantircognition
9Design system architecture 141/198 · 71%
Appears in postings at 141 of 198 companies (1211 postings). Most postings at:
databricksamazonopenainvidiamicrosoftanduriladobegoogleapplescaleaianthropicpalantir
10Set technical direction / roadmap 137/198 · 69%
Appears in postings at 137 of 198 companies (959 postings). Most postings at:
databricksopenaiamazonandurildecagonmicrosoftwritergoogleanthropiccloudflaredeepgramscaleai
11Mentor and grow engineers 136/198 · 69%
Appears in postings at 136 of 198 companies (1131 postings). Most postings at:
databricksamazonadobeandurilmicrosoftdatadoggooglenvidiashield-aiwaymogitlabmotional
12Take models/prototypes to production 130/198 · 66%
Appears in postings at 130 of 198 companies (683 postings). Most postings at:
databricksopenaiadobeappleamazonwaymomicrosoftscaleainetflixanthropiccerebrasdeepgram
13Build and maintain data pipelines 111/198 · 56%
Appears in postings at 111 of 198 companies (649 postings). Most postings at:
databricksappleamazonadobesnowflakenvidiadecagonwaymoscaleaianthropicmicrosoftmotional
Bar = share of the 198 companies whose postings mention it; when sorted by postings, bars show relative posting volume within the section. Click any row for the companies with the most matching postings. A mention in a posting is not the same as a hard requirement.
Turn market breadth into your three priorities
Methodology & FAQ
Postings collected 2026-08-05 from public Greenhouse, Lever, and Ashby job boards, plus the JSON APIs big-tech career sites use themselves (Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, Adobe, Salesforce, Intel, Netflix — sampled to ~150 AI-engineering postings each). Meta is the one large holdout. Titles filtered to AI-engineering-adjacent roles (AI/ML/LLM engineer, MLOps, forward-deployed, agent engineering); research-scientist and non-technical roles excluded. Repeated company boilerplate is stripped before topic counting. Data snapshot: 2026-08-05; snapshots are kept per run, and month-over-month trend deltas will be published once two comparable monthly snapshots exist.
What skills do AI engineers need in 2026?
Based on 3,647 job postings at 198 companies: Python and LLM experience (mentioned in postings at ~8 in 10 companies), building agents, API/backend engineering, observability, evals/benchmarking, and inference optimization. Classic ML research skills are asked for far less often than production LLM-systems skills.
Is RAG still an in-demand skill?
RAG appears at 80 of 198 companies — real but mid-tier demand. Evals and agents appear at roughly twice as many companies.
What data is this based on?
3,647 AI-engineering-adjacent postings scraped 2026-08-05 from the job boards of 198 companies — frontier labs, big tech (Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia), robotics, and consumer tech. Company boilerplate is stripped before counting so a topic only counts when the job itself asks for it.