Which areas of the country are hiring the most artificial intelligence (A.I.) and machine learning experts? If you look at the data, some of the nation’s biggest tech hubs also have the biggest hunger for A.I. talent—perhaps no surprise, given all the local companies that want to seed A.I. into their products and services.
As you can see from the following chart, generated from data in CompTIA’s latest job report, employers in Texas cities are on the hunt for artificial intelligence talent, joining New York City, Silicon Valley, Boston, Seattle, and Chicago. Check out the full chart:
The prevalence of Texas is no surprise when you consider how many companies have recently set down roots in Austin, Dallas, and Houston, attracted by those metro areas' growing tech scene and favorable taxes. For example, Tesla recently announced that it would move its corporate headquarters to Austin.
Responding to a survey by Blind (which anonymously surveys technologists) in 2020, some 29 percent of technology professionals said that Texas was “the next Silicon Valley” and that they planned to move, versus the 36 percent who said that “Silicon Valley will always be the tech hub” (and that they’re staying). Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard, Apple, Oracle, and dozens of other tech companies large and small have opened new facilities and factories in cities across the state—and they’re evidently looking for A.I. talent.
For those interested in a career working with artificial intelligence, the rewards are potentially vast: O’Reilly pegs the average salary of data and A.I. professionals at $146,000 per year (that’s from 2,778 respondents in the U.S. and 284 in the U.K.); salaries increased an average of 2.25 percent per year. A.I.-related salaries in California averaged $176,000; in Texas, they hit $147,000; and in New York, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, and Washington, DC, these salaries drifted at around the $150,000 level.
No matter where you work and live, in other words, you can draw hefty compensation if you know your way around the latest A.I. and machine learning tools. Keep an eye on emerging A.I. trends such as automation and analytics—they could prove good for your career.
