# The AI Boom Is Not All Doom and Gloom

Here is a thought more companies need to hear right now.

Every time a major technological shift happens, the conversation quickly turns to what we stand to lose. Jobs disappearing, industries collapsing, skills becoming obsolete overnight. The AI boom is no different, and yes, certain roles are being automated at a speed that is genuinely disruptive.

But here is what that narrative consistently leaves out. New doors are opening just as fast, and the smartest companies are already walking through them.

The Redundancy Conversation We Are Getting Wrong

Right now, boardrooms across the world are having the same conversation. A role has been automated. A team has shrunk. A skilled employee who spent years building expertise in your business is suddenly surplus to requirements.

Before that conversation ends with a redundancy notice, here is the question that should be asked first.

Could this person be retrained for one of the new roles the AI boom is actively creating?

Your existing team already knows your product, your customers and your brand. That institutional knowledge, combined with new AI focused skills, is an extraordinarily powerful combination. Retraining is almost always cheaper than recruiting, and the loyalty it builds is priceless.

The World Economic Forum projects that new AI driven roles will outpace job losses, with up to 97 million new positions emerging from this shift. These are not distant projections. These roles exist now, and they are being hired for now.

Here is a breakdown of exactly what those roles are, and why each one matters specifically to B2B SaaS, marketing and e-commerce businesses.

AI Engineer and ML Architect

These are the builders. They design, deploy and maintain the AI systems that power your product or operations. In B2B SaaS, an AI Engineer can embed intelligent features directly into your platform, think smart recommendations, automated workflows and predictive churn scoring. In e-commerce, they power personalisation engines that increase average order value and reduce cart abandonment. In marketing, they build the infrastructure that makes real time campaign optimisation possible.

This is one of the most compensated roles in the current market, with median salaries for AI related positions sitting close to $157,000 in 2025.

AI and ML Researcher

This role focuses on what is coming next. Researchers explore new model capabilities and identify how emerging AI developments can be applied to your specific business context. For B2B SaaS companies, this translates into a genuine competitive moat. You are not just adopting AI, you are shaping how it works for your industry before your competitors even know it is possible.

In a market where AI capabilities are evolving weekly, having someone whose entire job is to stay ahead of that curve is not a luxury, it is a strategic necessity.

AI Trainer

AI Trainers teach your systems how to behave correctly. They label data, correct model outputs and refine responses over time. This role grew more than four times in a single year, and the reason is simple. An AI system is only as good as what it learns from.

In a marketing context, an AI Trainer ensures your content generation tools stay on brand and produce outputs that actually reflect your voice. In e-commerce, they improve product recommendation accuracy, which directly impacts conversion rates. In B2B SaaS, they refine your AI powered support and onboarding tools so customers get the right answers faster, reducing churn and support costs simultaneously.

AI Ethicist and AI Auditor

These roles exist to make sure your AI does not embarrass you, expose you legally, or alienate your customers. As AI becomes more embedded in business operations, the risks of unchecked systems are growing alongside the opportunities.

In B2B SaaS, where enterprise clients increasingly audit the tools they buy for bias and compliance risks, having an AI Ethicist on your team is a trust signal and a genuine sales advantage. In e-commerce, it means your personalisation and pricing algorithms are fair and defensible. In marketing, it ensures your AI generated content meets regulatory standards and does not damage your brand reputation in ways that are difficult and expensive to recover from.

AI Focused Product Manager

AI focused Product Managers sit at the intersection of customer problems and technical capability. They translate what your AI can do into features your users actually want and will pay for.

In B2B SaaS, this role is essential for shipping AI features that drive retention and expansion revenue. In e-commerce, they own the roadmap for intelligent search, dynamic pricing and customer experience tools. In marketing, they manage the build out of martech stacks that make your team faster, smarter and more data driven. As AI capabilities expand, this role becomes the connective tissue between what is technically possible and what is commercially valuable.

Data Scientist

Not a new role, but one that has transformed completely. Today’s Data Scientists are fluent in machine learning, predictive modelling and AI integration in ways that were not expected of the role even three years ago.

In B2B SaaS, they identify the signals that predict churn, expansion and product led growth opportunities before they become visible to the naked eye. In e-commerce, they build the models that forecast demand, optimise inventory and personalise the shopping experience at scale. In marketing, they connect campaign performance to revenue in ways that gut feel and basic reporting simply cannot. If you have a Data Scientist on your team who has not yet been upskilled in AI tools and frameworks, that is an immediate opportunity.

Prompt Engineer

Prompt Engineers know how to get the best possible outputs from AI tools. They craft the instructions, frameworks and workflows that make generative AI reliable, consistent and on brand across an organisation.

In marketing, this role is immediately valuable, ensuring your AI generated copy, briefs and creative concepts are consistently sharp and aligned with your brand voice. In B2B SaaS, they improve the quality of AI assisted customer communications and in-product copy. In e-commerce, they optimise product descriptions, ad creative and email sequences generated at scale.

It is worth noting that prompt engineering is increasingly being absorbed as a core skill across teams rather than remaining a standalone role. Which means whoever on your team learns this first has a significant and immediate competitive edge over colleagues and competitors alike.

AI Content Creator

This is the role that grew by 134% in 2025 alone, and the numbers make sense when you understand what the role actually involves.

AI Content Creators use generative tools not just to produce content faster, but to produce it smarter. They test angles, formats and audiences at a velocity that was previously impossible without a team ten times the size. In marketing, this is a game changer for paid social, SEO content and email campaigns. In e-commerce, it means product content, ad creative and seasonal campaigns can be refreshed continuously without bottlenecks. In B2B SaaS, it supports demand generation, thought leadership and sales enablement at a scale that small teams could never previously sustain.

The Bigger Picture

These roles are not theoretical. They are not five years away. They are being hired for right now, across industries, geographies and company sizes, and the organisations introducing them proactively are building advantages that will be very difficult for slower movers to close.

In Q1 2025 alone, AI related positions in the US grew by over 25% year on year. The median salary for these roles is rising quarter on quarter. The demand is real, the compensation reflects it, and the strategic value to businesses that move early is compounding.

Here is the reframe that every business leader needs right now.

The person whose role just became redundant is not a liability. They are a person with institutional knowledge, existing relationships and proven commitment to your business. The question is not whether to let them go. The question is which of these new roles they could grow into with the right investment and support.

The cost of upskilling is a fraction of the cost of losing and replacing talent. The loyalty it generates is a long term asset. And the competitive advantage of having an AI fluent team that also deeply understands your business is something no external hire can replicate quickly.

Stay ahead. Evolve your team. The companies that treat this moment as an opportunity rather than a threat are the ones that will define the next decade.

— -

• What new AI roles are you seeing emerge in your industry? Leave a comment below, I would love to hear how different sectors are navigating this shift.*