Generative AI to Create New Jobs in Software Engineering by 2027
TapTechNews October 6th news, the market research organization Gartner released a forecast on October 3rd. By 2027, generative AI will create new job positions in the field of software engineering and operations. 80% of engineers will need to upgrade their skills.
Gartner senior principal analyst Philip Walsh said, 'Bold predictions about the potential of AI have led to speculation that AI may reduce the demand for human engineers or even completely replace them. Although AI will redefine the role of software engineers, human expertise and creativity remain key to developing complex and innovative software.'
TapTechNews learned from the report that AI will affect the work of software engineers in the following three stages.
Short-term: AI will still be applied within a certain range
AI tools will bring a certain degree of productivity improvement by enhancing the existing working methods and tasks of developers. Especially in enterprises with mature engineering practices, the work efficiency of senior developers will be significantly improved.
Mid-term: AI agent (AIAgent) will break through the existing working mode
AI agent will change the working mode of developers, enabling developers to be fully automated, marking the arrival of the AI-native software engineering era. At this stage, most of the code will be generated by AI instead of being written by humans.
Walsh explained, 'In the AI-native era, software engineers will adopt an 'AI-first' way of thinking and pay more attention to how to make the AI agent understand and handle the background and constraints of specific tasks.' Natural language prompt engineering and augmented generation (RAG) skills will become essential abilities for developers.
Long-term: The progress of AI technology will break more limitations, and AI engineering will become the mainstream
Although AI will improve engineering efficiency, enterprises will need more skilled software engineers to meet the rapidly increasing demand for AI-enabled software.
'Developing AI-driven applications will give rise to a new type of software professional - AI engineers. They possess comprehensive skills in software development, data science, and AI/machine learning, and these skills will be highly sought after.'
According to a survey conducted by Gartner of 300 US and UK enterprises in the fourth quarter of 2023, 56% of software engineering directors believe that AI/machine learning engineers are the most urgently needed talents in 2024, and the skills of applying AI/machine learning to practical scenarios are also considered the biggest weakness of engineers.
The report said that to support AI engineers, enterprises need to increase investment in AI development platforms. AI development platforms can help enterprises build AI technology more efficiently and apply it on a large scale to enterprise solutions. 'This means that enterprises also need to provide skill training for data engineering and platform engineering teams to master the tools and processes that support the continuous integration and development of AI.'