Are companies like mine posting AI engineering roles?
Share of each group that posted an AI or machine learning engineer role
Twelve months to October 2026. Counts for a group under 30 companies.
By group
Series A and B AI companies: no study is published yet, so the count is of roles posted in the twelve months or listed on the latest read, over every company in the group.
Listed on our read of 24 October
What the postings say
- 0111 in 100 of the 124 seed-stage AI companies we follow posted an AI or machine learning engineer role in the twelve months to October 2026; 9 in 100 of the 91 Bonfire Ventures portfolio companies and 19 in 100 of the 88 Vista Equity Partners portfolio companies did.
- 02Of the 137 companies whose public boards we read on 24 October, 72 listed an AI or machine learning engineer role, 240 listings in all.
- 03Of the 11 Valor Ventures portfolio companies with a posting we could read, none posted an AI or machine learning engineer role; the other 15 have no posting we could read.
For founders and CEOs
A dedicated AI engineering seat is rarer than the talk suggests: most companies like yours posted none this year. General engineering roles carry AI work too, so the question is whether the work needs its own seat yet.
For portfolio talent teams
The groups where a larger share posted an AI or machine learning engineer are where AI engineers are courted hardest; a portfolio company opening its first such seat competes with them.
For hiring managers
If you are deciding whether to open a dedicated AI seat, the chart shows how many peers did. Most did not, which is a reason to scope the seat tightly, not a reason to skip it.
Questions people ask
Should I hire an AI specialist or build AI skills across the team?
The postings show most companies like yours posted no dedicated AI or machine learning engineer role this year, while software engineering roles sit at or near the top in every group. A specialist makes sense when the AI work is the product; otherwise it often sits inside engineering.
Is AI engineering hiring picking up?
This page does not say so. A lean into the latest quarter is stated only when more than a quarter of a role's postings fell in the last 90 days at five or more companies, and no group clears that for AI or machine learning engineering today.
Does a posting mean the company hired someone?
No. A posting says a company was looking for the role, not that it filled it, and a company that posted the same role five times counts once. The page reads what was posted and listed, never who was hired.
Is a company that posted nothing not hiring?
Not necessarily. Many companies hire through referrals, agencies and their own networks and never post, and many run no public job board we can read. A company with no posting we could read is unknown, so every figure here counts the companies that did post, and is the least of the group that was hiring a role, never the most.
Methodology and data
Window
Seed-stage AI companies: 2025-10-17 to 2026-10-17. Bonfire Ventures portfolio: 2025-10-17 to 2026-10-17. Vista Equity Partners portfolio: 2025-10-14 to 2026-10-14. Valor Ventures portfolio: 2025-10-14 to 2026-10-14. Listed: the board read of 2026-10-24.
Who is included
- Shares are of every company in the group as its study counts them.
- Listed figures are over the 137 of the 462 companies we track whose public job board we read every weekday (Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby, Workable), on the read of 2026-10-24. A company with no board we read is unknown, not quiet: it may hire through referrals, agencies or its own site.
Coverage
- Posting share, given only for groups not read at the cap: Seed-stage AI companies: 9% of postings (17 companies at the cap of 20). Bonfire Ventures portfolio: 5% of postings (14 companies at the cap of 20). The Vista Equity Partners portfolio's posting share is never stated: 84 of its 87 posting companies sit at a cap of 10, so it would describe the cap.
- Of the 240 AI or machine learning engineer listings, the median had been up 84 days among those listed a year or less; 24 had been up more than a year and are left out of that median.
Limits and caps
- Seed-stage AI companies: twelve months of postings to 2026-10-17, the 20 most recent per company; 17 of the 37 companies with postings sit at that cap, so their counts are floors. Every published group is provisional under the benchmark gate until 90 in 100 of its companies are looked for in both sources and 80 in 100 have their whole year read.
- Bonfire Ventures portfolio: twelve months of postings to 2026-10-17, the 20 most recent per company; 14 of the 38 companies with postings sit at that cap, so their counts are floors. Every published group is provisional under the benchmark gate until 90 in 100 of its companies are looked for in both sources and 80 in 100 have their whole year read.
- Vista Equity Partners portfolio: twelve months of postings to 2026-10-14, the 10 most recent per company; 84 of the 87 companies with postings sit at that cap, so their counts are floors and this group states company shares only, never a posting share, a total or a per-company count. Every published group is provisional under the benchmark gate until 90 in 100 of its companies are looked for in both sources and 80 in 100 have their whole year read.
- Valor Ventures portfolio: twelve months of postings to 2026-10-14, the 20 most recent per company; 3 of the 11 companies with postings sit at that cap, so their counts are floors. Every published group is provisional under the benchmark gate until 90 in 100 of its companies are looked for in both sources and 80 in 100 have their whole year read.
- A share is stated only over 30 companies or more; below that the page gives counts. Medians, never means. Rules dashboards@1.0.0 (src/lib/dashboards.ts, tested in test/dashboards.test.ts).
When each figure can be stated
| Figure | Stated from |
|---|---|
| Company shares for groups of 30 or more | today |
| Companies listing an AI or machine learning engineer role, over the boards we read | today, as "listed on our read of" that day |
| Share of postings, seed-stage and Bonfire Ventures groups | today, in the method section with the per-company limit named |
| Share of postings, Vista Equity Partners | never at the current history read |
Sources
- seed-stage-ai-companies.json (study, version vertical@1.0.0)
- bonfire-ventures-portfolio.json (study, version vertical@1.0.0)
- vista-equity-partners-portfolio.json (study, version vertical@1.0.0)
- valor-ventures-portfolio.json (study, version vertical@1.0.0)
- are-companies-like-mine-hiring-ai-engineers.json (the Sunday recompute of crm.role_openings)
- Dashboard file computed 2026-10-25T11:10:43.581Z; board read of 2026-10-24.
- Original research computed from the signal layer of the recruiting CRM behind Human in the Loop Talent: public job boards, company news, funding announcements and headcount readings, collected continuously for every tracked company and recomputed every Sunday. A figure is published only when the sample supports it; the data behind every page is published as JSON next to it.
- Licence: CC BY 4.0. Reuse with attribution.
Cite this
Related: Hiring Intelligence, the hiring benchmark.
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