AI Jobs Beyond Engineering: Where Remote AI and Automation Roles Are Hiring Now

Search for "AI jobs" and you mostly get machine learning engineers. So we read every live remote job title on NodJobs this week and counted the ones that mention AI, machine learning, LLMs, generative or agentic AI, MLOps or applied science. The result looks less like an engineering trend and more like a change in how whole companies hire.

The numbers at a glance

• 84 of the 1,192 remote jobs open right now mention AI in their title — about 7%.
• The share is rising: 17 of the 195 jobs posted in the last 7 days are AI-titled, close to 9%.
• 37 of the 84 (44%) are outside the AI & machine learning field itself, and 29 of them are in non-engineering teams.
• These roles are unusually open about pay: 62 of 84 publish a salary, and the median posted range is $239,000 a year.
• Only 2 of the 84 are open worldwide. The rest are remote for US-based candidates.

Where AI shows up outside engineering

Sales is the biggest of these groups. Companies selling AI products now hire people who can sell them: Samsara is looking for two Specialist Sellers for its AI products at $350,000 a year, Datadog wants sales engineers for its AI accounts ($149,000–$200,000), and Ramp and Pinterest are both hiring for AI partnerships.

Titles you may not have seen before

Some of this week's titles describe jobs that are still taking shape. A few real examples:

• Forward Deployed Engineer (AI Enablement) — Reddit, senior and lead roles at $180,200–$272,400. Engineers who sit with teams to put AI tools to work.
• Agentic Operator, Growth Marketing — CircleCI, $118,500–$171,000. A marketer who runs campaigns with AI agents.
• Head of AI Native Operations — Supabase, and Director, Internal AI Operations — LaunchDarkly ($269,400–$370,480). Leaders hired to change how the company itself works with AI.
• Offensive AI Security Engineer — Samsara, $157,675–$238,500. Security work that attacks AI systems to find their weak spots.
• Customer Activation Manager, AI Spend — Ramp. Helping customers adopt a company's AI features.
• "AI Native" mobile engineers — Life360 has several iOS and Android roles with that label, at $118,500–$216,500.

Does "AI" in the title pay more?

Inside the AI & machine learning field, pay is high: the median posted salary is $272,675 a year. Outside it, the picture is mixed — not the premium many people expect.

AI-titled product and software roles pay about the same as their peers, and AI-titled sales roles pay a little less. It is an early read that we will keep tracking every week, but for now the answer is "no clear premium yet". Some of the most approachable AI roles sit well below the headline numbers: legal operations at $80,027–$121,050, digital customer success at $105,910–$160,200 and strategic finance at $120,000–$140,000.

Automation: the more approachable side of AI hiring

AI roles often come with a second word: automation. Eight live titles mention automation, workflows or no-code tools — none of them test automation — and three name AI and automation together. Most sit in operations teams, not engineering:

• Senior Legal Operations Specialist (AI & Automation) — Samsara, $80,027–$121,050.
• Digital Customer Success Manager, AI & Automation — Samsara, $105,910–$160,200.
• Finance Systems Analyst, Integrations and Automation — 1Password, $83,000.
• Manager, People Ops & Automation — Coinbase.
• Senior Support Engineer, Tooling & Automation — Thorn, $79,000–$109,250.
• Staff Machine Learning Engineer, Compliance Automation — Coinbase, where AI is used to automate compliance work.

The pay tells a different story from AI engineering. The median posted salary for these automation roles is about $116,000 a year, against $272,675 for AI & machine learning — but the bar to entry is lower too. If you already build workflows, integrations or reporting in your current job, these titles describe work you are doing. It is an early signal, and one we will follow in the coming weeks.

Who is hiring for AI roles

Most of these roles are for experienced people: 24 are principal or staff level, 20 manager-level, 20 senior and 4 lead. There is just one internship among the 84.

How to get into an AI role if you're not an ML engineer

• Start in your own field. A third of AI-titled jobs are in sales, product, marketing, support, finance and HR — the experience you already have is the entry ticket.
• Search with the words employers use: "AI", "agentic", "AI enablement", "AI operations", "forward deployed" and "automation" all appear in this week's titles.
• Read what the AI part means. In some roles AI is the product you sell or support; in others it's how the team works. The description tells you which skills to show.
• Don't assume a raise. Outside AI engineering, an AI title doesn't reliably pay more yet — compare the posted range with similar roles.
• Check where you can work from. Only 2 of 84 AI-titled roles are open worldwide.

A lesson from Klarna: automation still needs people

In February 2024, Klarna announced that, by its own count, its new AI assistant was handling the workload of about 700 support staff. About a year later, its CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski told Bloomberg the company was hiring human support staff again: the AI service was cheaper, but quality had suffered. The new roles were fully remote. The jobs in this report follow the same pattern — companies are not only automating work, they are hiring people to run, sell, secure and improve that automation.

Quick answers

• Do I need to code to get an AI job? Not for many of them. About a third of this week's AI-titled roles are in sales, product, marketing, support, finance and HR.
• Which AI jobs pay the most? AI & machine learning engineering, with a median posted salary of $272,675 a year. Specialist AI sales roles can match it: Samsara lists $350,000.
• Are remote AI jobs open worldwide? Rarely. Only 2 of 84 this week; most are remote for US-based candidates.
• What is the difference between AI jobs and automation jobs? AI roles build, sell or apply AI systems. Automation roles redesign workflows so work gets done with less manual effort, often using AI. This week, automation roles had a median posted salary of about $116,000.

Browse all remote AI & machine learning jobs, see every company hiring, or read this week's Remote Hiring Pulse for the full market.