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80% of software engineering workforce will need upskilling because of AI

80% of software engineering workforce will need upskilling because of AI

SIA Editorial Staff
| October 4, 2024

Main article

Generative AI will bring new roles in software engineering and operations, and Gartner projects that 80% of the software engineering workforce will need to be upskilled because if it.

Gartner forecast that AI will impact software engineering jobs in three ways:

Short term. AI tools will generate modest productivity increases by augmenting existing developer work patterns and tasks. Seeing the most productivity benefits will be senior developers in organizations with mature engineering practices.

Medium term. AI agents will transform work patterns by enabling developers to fully automate and offload more tasks. Most code will be AI-generated rather than human-authored, according to Gartner.

“In the AI-native era, software engineers will adopt an ‘AI-first’ mindset, where they primarily focus on steering AI agents toward the most relevant context and constraints for a given task,” Philip Walsh, senior principal analyst at Gartner, said in a press release. This will make natural-language prompt engineering and retrieval-augmented generation skills essential for software engineers.

Long term. While AI will make engineering more efficient, organizations will need even more skilled software engineers to meet increasing demand for AI-powered software.

“Building AI-empowered software will demand a new breed of software professional, the AI engineer,” Walsh said. “The AI engineer possesses a unique combination of skills in software engineering, data science and AI/machine learning; skills that are sought after.”

To support AI engineers, organizations will need to invest in AI developer platforms, which will help organizations build AI capabilities more efficiently and integrate AI into enterprise solutions at scale.