Pave Launches Hot Jobs Index With AI Engineer on Top

By AI, Created 4:19 PM UTC, May 18, 2026, /AGP/ – Pave launched a monthly Hot Jobs Index based on real-time data from more than 9,000 companies, naming AI Engineer the hottest tech job and Web Development the coldest for Q1 2026. The index is meant to show hiring shifts as they happen, not months later, and also points to a rising wave of AI-related hardware and transformation roles.

Why it matters: - Pave’s new index tries to show which tech jobs are heating up or cooling down in real time. - The rankings matter for employers, workers and recruiters tracking where demand is shifting in the AI era. - The data points to a broader labor-market reshuffle across software, hardware and internal operations.

What happened: - Pave launched the Hot Jobs Index on May 13, 2026. - The monthly ranking covers the hottest and coldest jobs across the technology workforce. - In the inaugural Q1 2026 edition, AI Engineer ranked No. 1 with a score of 97 out of 100. - Web Development ranked coldest with a score of -83. - The index uses real-time data from more than 9,000 companies connected through employer human capital management systems.

The details: - Each role gets a Hot Jobs Score from -100 to +100. - Hiring momentum makes up 65% of the score and measures how a role’s share of new hires changes over time. - Workforce prevalence makes up the remaining 35% and measures how a role’s share of total headcount changes. - The 10 hottest jobs in Q1 2026 were AI Engineer, Internal Audit, Information Security Operations, Machine Learning Engineer, Data Governance, Field Marketing, Deal Desk, Treasurer, Technical Account Management and Firmware Engineering. - The 10 coldest jobs were Web Development, Content Marketing, Digital Marketing Generalist, HR Generalist, Marketing Technology Management, Network Systems Administration, Applications Engineering, Media Production, Art and HR Operations. - Pave said the index is different from survey-based labor reports because it measures hiring and workforce changes as they happen. - The index also includes macro labor market trends such as hiring rates, annualized turnover, workforce age demographics, gender representation and global talent arbitrage data. - The company published the index at Pave Hot Jobs Index.

Between the lines: - The rankings suggest AI demand is moving beyond model-building and into adjacent functions that support deployment, governance and infrastructure. - Chipmaking roles like Layout and Mask Design and ASIC Engineering are also rising, signaling spillover demand from AI infrastructure into semiconductors. - Pave is also tracking emerging roles that are growing fast enough to notice before they have enough data for a formal score. - AI Transformation Lead is one of those roles and focuses on finding where AI can create value and leading change management inside companies. - More than 2.0% of companies in Pave’s dataset now have at least one AI Transformation Lead, up from 0.2% three years ago. - Hiring for that role has accelerated sharply since mid-2025. - At large public technology companies, employees ages 21 to 25 have fallen to 6.8% of the workforce from 15.0% in January 2023. - The average employee age at those companies rose from 34.3 years to 39.4 years over the same period.

What’s next: - Pave said it will publish the Hot Jobs Index monthly. - The next releases should show whether AI-related roles keep leading the market or whether the rankings broaden to other parts of tech. - The index will continue to track labor trends across hiring, turnover, demographics and global talent movement.

The bottom line: - Pave’s first Hot Jobs Index shows AI is still the dominant force reshaping tech hiring, while older growth areas like web and digital marketing are losing momentum.