Artificial intelligence is igniting a new round of talent competition on Wall Street, and the focus of this battle has shifted from model builders to hybrid engineers capable of embedding AI directly into business operations.

On October 4, according to an analysis exclusively provided to CNBC by corporate hiring data company Draup, AI-related job postings published this year by banks including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Capital One surged 49% year-over-year, reaching 139,819 positions.

Among these, job references related to "agent orchestration engineers" skyrocketed 1,721% this year, making it one of the hottest professions in the financial industry right now.

This trend indicates that Wall Street is accelerating its shift from the chatbot phase to the next stage, where multiple AI agents collaboratively handle large volumes of business, exerting a profound impact on banks' workforce structures, management strategies, and shareholder return expectations.

Compensation for generative AI-related positions is also notably higher than other technology roles in the financial industry, with the median base salary for generative AI managers at approximately $190,000.

Agent Orchestration Becomes the Hottest Skill, Demand Explodes

Draup conducted its analysis by scraping publicly available job postings from platforms such as LinkedIn. Data shows that job references involving "agent orchestration engineers" jumped 1,721% this year.

Agent orchestration refers to the ability to design multiple AI agents that collaborate to complete tasks. For example, one agent reviews raw data, another analyzes documents, and a third verifies compliance, with all three working in coordination.

Draup CEO Vijay Swaminathan said in an interview:

This is arguably the hottest skill on Wall Street right now. It is a tremendous opportunity. Banks need people who understand data, understand AI, and also know how to put it into practice.

Behind this demand is the urgent intent of banking institutions to drive AI into real business lines. To deliver on AI's promise of boosting productivity and automating repetitive work, major banks are accelerating their push toward a future where AI agents shoulder more of the workforce.

Emerging Roles Rise: Forward-Deployed Engineers Become Key Positions

This hiring wave has clearly moved beyond the early scope of model-building engineers and data scientists, extending toward "forward-deployed engineers." The core responsibility of this type of talent is to embed AI directly into specific business scenarios such as trading desks, compliance departments, and back-office operations.

Vijay Swaminathan pointed out that these roles require both technical capabilities and specialized domain expertise, spanning from trading desks to back-office operations and even human resources, with task complexity far exceeding expectations.

Vijay Swaminathan emphasized:

There is a great deal of complexity inside enterprises. Some of it is obvious, but much of it is hidden. Even automating a simple process takes a significant amount of time.

He illustrated this with the example of automated approval for employee vacation requests: even this single scenario generates a large number of edge cases and special exceptions.

Agent orchestration skills align closely with the work of forward-deployed engineers, because the latter need to determine which agents are necessary, what functions each should perform, what technologies to adopt, and when human oversight is required.

Demand for underlying technical tools related to agent building has also surged significantly. According to Draup data:

References to LangGraph, used for building multi-step workflow frameworks, jumped 679%;

References to LlamaIndex, which helps AI applications connect to data sources, rose 291%;

References to retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) technology, used to feed enterprise database information into AI models, climbed 259%.

Meanwhile, the importance of soft skills is also rising. Vijay Swaminathan said Draup's analysis shows that industry attention to soft skills such as problem-solving, creativity, the ability to ask deeper questions, and a deep understanding of processes is being reinforced once again.

AI Governance Demand Surges, Related Job References Already Exceed Model Training

As AI systems are deployed more deeply across financial institutions, demand for roles centered on risk control and compliance governance has surged in tandem, with growth rates no less than those of technical development positions.

Draup data shows that job postings involving "responsible AI" surged 657% this year, while references related to AI governance and risk management jumped 394% and 359% respectively.

The total number of job references for governance-related skills has now exceeded 16,000, nearly double the approximately 8,400 references related to model training, deployment, and operations.

Vijay Swaminathan said one of the current priorities for security teams is preventing systemic security vulnerabilities arising from third-party tools or external model integrations. Vijay Swaminathan said:

Ensuring that the third-party tools we use in these products do not spiral out of control at the cybersecurity level is a major focus right now.

High Compensation but Persistent Talent Gap, Banks Bet on Internal Retraining

Despite attractive compensation, with the median base salary for generative AI managers at approximately $190,000, higher than other technology positions in the financial industry, filling these specialized roles remains a challenge.

Vijay Swaminathan said that to bridge the talent gap, major banks are vigorously advancing internal retraining programs to systematically upgrade the skills of existing developers and business experts.

This AI buildout wave itself will also generate ripple effects. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has repeatedly mentioned a "massive redeployment plan" for employees as AI takes over more work.

Vijay Swaminathan holds a relatively optimistic view on this:

I believe that as long as we prioritize cultivating soft skills on top of the right technical capabilities, people will be able to adapt and learn. For the right talent, this is a very exciting era.