What's an AI strategist?
We looked at 118 US job descriptions to find out. Here's what we learned.
AI strategist is just one of many names.
The same job shows up under 83 different titles across the postings. Here are the most popular:
74 other postings had unique titles.
What they all have in common?
They own an AI deployment end-to-end.
They face external customers.
We organized them into three high-level job families.
Where we drew the line
Not every role made it. Here's what we left out, and why.
In-demand skills: Stakeholder management, not code
92% of postings ask for stakeholder management. The discovery-to-delivery arc follows close behind. Technical tools are rarely specified.
Across 118 postings, the word “AI” shows up 1256 times.
That's an average of
per posting!
Only 46 of 115 postings name a specific model or lab. Everyone else just says “AI.” Excludes the labs' own postings (Anthropic, OpenAI) and their deployment arms, who naturally name themselves.
Pay: Most AI strategist roles offer ~$200K; senior leaders make more
Average of posted midpoints per company.
Comp rises cleanly with seniority.
It's expensive to compete with jobs in Big Law!
A two-city story
Most open roles want in person, in San Francisco or New York. A few offer remote.
Who's hiring?
Here's the breakdown by funding stage and headcount. Sizes are third-party estimates.
pair with a forward-deployed engineer
86 of 118 postings name an FDE, deployment engineer, or deployed software engineer as the partner. The strategist owns the customer and the outcome; the engineer owns the code.
Browse all 118 roles →