Artificial intelligence has brought a revolution in the industry. Companies are desperately poaching talent like anything. However, the shortage of skilled talent in the industry is a problem yet to be worked out. This has led to sky rocketing salaries in this domain.

Let’s take a look at some figures.

Job opportunities in artificial intelligence around the world are increasing. In the past three years, the number of job opportunities have almost doubled, according to Indeed. The search entries for ‘artificial intelligence’ and ‘machine learning’ have increased by 185 times, as per a report from Bloomberg. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that qualified candidates are available for the job.

Competition for talent in this space is steadily increasing, as companies are slowly adopting artificial intelligence. Demand for Artificial Intelligence Engineer has grown significantly over the last few years. Indeed.com, the popular job portal, analyzed millions of job postings from June 2015 to June 2018 and found that 20 percent of the job listings’ description had artificial intelligence or machine learning in it. It collected information on the job titles and derived information from them.

Here are few things that the report found.

Surprisingly, New York has the highest number of artificial job openings in the U. S. even more than San Francisco. Precisely, the number of AI-related jobs in New York are 11 percent more than in San Francisco. The tech industry pays the highest salaries. Name brand companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Uber, etc pay some of the highest salaries that include bonuses and stock options. Among all the job listings related to artificial intelligence and machine learning, Director of Analytics received the highest pay. The average salary for the post was determined to be $140, 837, from the analysis of job postings.

Roles including Machine learning engineers, computer vision engineers, and Data Scientists paid an average of $130,000. If the jobs are in located in New York or Silicon Valley, an additional $30,000 is offered.

This brings our attention that AI is flourishing throughout U. S. Though the concentration of AI-related jobs is the highest in New York, followed by San Francisco, and then San Jose. Other cities like Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago and other boast of equally good number of opportunities in AI. Looking at this, many tech workers are pursuing learning in AI-related certifications and equipping themselves for a career in AI. Given the present demand and the scope of growth in artificial intelligence, this has led to university and colleges to introduce programs. Some of the prominent universities already offer programs in artificial intelligence and machine learning in a move to close the demand-supply gap existing in this space.

At present, the count of AI practitioners in USA may not yet be up to the mark, but it has been showing considerable growth, as tech workers continue to reskill themselves in various AI-related roles. Getting on this trend, online learning start-ups have made their way and are getting good subscribers for facilitating their learning service. The start-ups feature content from industry experts along with extending practical and hands-on experience. Companies have devised in-house development programs to re-skill existing employees in these roles, instead of hiring from outside, in a bid to plan for future demand and ready employees to meet the future demand.

Lucrative salaries, increasing opportunities, and the freedom to move to any AI-related roles has opened up a plethora of opportunities to employed professionals. And the availability of learning resources and courses is pushing the way forward. If you’re looking to start a career in artificial intelligence now is definitely the time to start learning and preparing yourself. So get started now!