How to tell if a job posting is really an AI job: a 4-level scale

Counts differ because each database indexes a different set of publications. We treat OpenAlex as the canonical count; Google Scholar is not shown (no API, and crawling it violates its ToS).

How to tell if a job posting is really an AI job: a 4-level scale "AI Engineer", "AI Product Manager", "AI Solutions Specialist". Job titles with "AI" in them are multiplying, but the title alone tells you very little about the work. Here is the scale we use at Level to read a posting, with the number of live jobs at each level on 22 September 2026. Level 4: Build AI systems (score 80-100) Building AI systems is the job itself. Without AI, the role would not exist. Think model training, inference infrastructure, evaluation pipelines, applied research. *3,539 live jobs on 22 September 2026.* Level 3: Work with AI (score 60-79) The daily work happens on or around AI systems, without necessarily building the model: integrating LLMs into a product, managing an AI roadmap, running evaluations. Remove AI and the job is hollow. *6,574 live jobs.* Level 2: Use AI as a tool (score 40-59) An ordinary role whose duties require AI tools: coding with an assistant, writing or sourcing with one. The job exists without AI, but the posting expects you to use it. *3,275 live jobs.* Level 1: Work around AI (score 0-39) The work itself involves no AI, or AI only appears as scenery, such as a company tagline. This is the largest group by far. *34,347 live jobs, 72% of the 47,735 tracked.* Three questions to ask of any posting Does it name specific tools or models? Vague mentions of "AI-driven" rarely mean much. Named frameworks, model providers or evaluation tools usually do. Which skills does it ask for? Retrieval pipelines, fine-tuning or prompt evaluation point to Level 3 or 4, even when the title never says "AI". How much of the described work depends on them? One bullet out of fifteen is Level 2 at best. Most of the responsibilities is Level 3 or 4. Method Data: 47,735 live postings from 481 companies, read from their applicant tracking systems every six hours; counts as of 22 September 2026. Scoring: 0-100 from the posting text only, never the company's marketing. A posting whose text changes is scored again. Thresholds: fixed (80 / 60 / 40), so the share at each level moves with the market. Limits: where a description says nothing about AI, the level says AI is absent from the description, which is weaker than saying it is absent from the job. Full method and definitions: jobsbylevel.com/method