According to forecasts by the consulting firm Gartner, Until 2027, generative AI will create new jobs in operations and software engineering. As a consequence, 80% of software engineers will have to improve their training and gain new skills.
The consulting firm points out that generative AI will affect the software engineer position in three ways. The first, in the short term, will see AI operate within certain limits. AI tools will generate modest productivity increases at this stage, amplifying developers’ work patterns and tasks. The productivity benefits of AI will be most significant for senior developers working in companies and organizations with mature engineering practices.
The second will occur in the medium term, and will be marked by the emergence of AI agents, which will exceed the limits. These agents will work on development work patterns allowing developers to fully automate more tasks, and escalate them to them. This is how native software engineering with AI will arrive. So most of the code will be generated by AI, and not by humans.
At this stage, according to the consultancy, software engineers will adopt an AI-centric framework, in which they will be primarily dedicated to directing AI agents towards the most relevant context for a task, in addition to pointing out its limits. This will make skills related to natural language prompt engineering and rescue augmented generation (RAG) essential for software engineers.
In the long term, advances in AI will push the limits and the rise of AI engineering will arrive. Of course, keep in mind that although AI will make engineering more efficient, companies will need even more software engineers with the skills necessary to meet the rapidly growing demand for AI-powered software.
The AI engineer, according to Gartner, will have a unique skill combination of software engineering, data science, machine learning, and AI. In fact, there is already beginning to be a demand for professionals in the sector with skills that allow them to work in development based on AI.
According to a Gartner survey carried out in the last quarter of 2023 among 300 companies in the United Kingdom and the United States, 56% of software engineering managers indicated the AI and machine learning engineer as the most in-demand profile for 2024, and considered that applying AI and machine learning to applications was the most notable in terms of lack of skills.
For this, Companies will have to invest in AI development platforms to support AI engineers. These platforms will help companies and organizations develop AI capabilities more efficiently. Also to integrate AI into business solutions at scale. But to make this investment, companies will have to improve the skills of their data and platform engineering teams, so that they can adopt tools and processes that drive continuous integration and the development of AI elements.