“Prompt Engineering” is not a job anymore, but a skill.

Big picture: “prompt engineering” ‘s rise and fall as a career is a telling illustration of how quickly AI job landscapes can change. The era of low-barrier, easy-access AI roles is likely to be over. They will be replaced by positions requiring deeper expertise and the willingness to evolve with technology.

Two years ago, prompt engineers were the talk of the tech industry – a seemingly indispensable new job that was born from the rapid rise in artificial intelligence. Companies were The company was eager to hire experts who could craft the correct questions for large language model, ensuring optimal AI performances. The role was easy to fill, did not require a lot of technical knowledge, and was seen as an entry point into the booming AI industry.

Today prompt engineering is a rare standalone role. What was once a highly coveted skill set is now expected of anyone who works with AI. Ironically, some companies use AI to generate prompts that are then used by their AI systems. This further reduces the need for prompt engineers.

In a wider sense, the rise and fall of prompt engineers highlights a truth about the AI jobs market: new positions can disappear as quickly as they are created. Malcolm Frank, CEO at TalentGenius in an interview with Fast Company, says “AI is already eating its own,” .

“Prompt engineering has become something that’s embedded in almost every role, and people know how to do it. Also, now AI can help you write the perfect prompts that you need. It’s turned from a job into a task very, very quickly.”

The initial appeal of prompt engineering was its low barrier to entry. Unlike many tech roles, it didn’t require years of specialized education or coding experience, making it especially attractive to job seekers hoping to break into AI. In 2023, LinkedIn profiles were filled with self-described prompt engineers, and the North American market for prompt engineering was valued at $75.5 million, growing at a rate of 32.8 percent annually.

Yet the hype outpaced reality. According to Allison Shrivastava, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab, prompt engineering was rarely listed as an official job title. Instead, it has typically been folded into roles like machine learning engineer or automation architect. “I’m not seeing it as a standalone job title,” she added.

As the hype fades, the AI job market is shifting toward roles that require deeper technical expertise. The distinction is clear: while prompt engineers focused on crafting queries for LLMs, machine learning engineers are the ones building and improving those models.

Lerner notes that demand for mock interviews for machine learning engineers has surged, increasing more than threefold in just two months. “The future is working on the LLM itself and continuing to make it better and better, rather than needing somebody to interpret it,” she says.

This shift is also evident in hiring trends. Shrivastava points out that while demand for general developers is declining, demand for engineering roles overall is rising. For those without a coding background, options are narrowing.

Founding a company or moving into management consulting, where expertise in AI implementation is increasingly valued, may be the best routes forward. As of February, consulting positions made up 12.4% of AI job titles on Indeed, signaling a boom in advisory roles as organizations seek to integrate AI into their operations.

Tim Tully, a partner at Menlo Ventures, has seen firsthand how AI is changing the nature of work, not necessarily by creating new jobs, but by reshaping existing ones. “I wouldn’t say that [there are] new jobs, necessarily; it’s more so that it’s changing how people work,” Tully says. “You’re using AI all the time now, whether you like it or not, and it’s accelerating what you do.”