Key points
- AI skills fast-track career advancement
- Young professionals outpacing older workers
- Research experience boosts AI opportunities
ISLAMABAD: While most entry-level job seekers continue to grapple with a sluggish labour market, a wave of young professionals specialising in artificial intelligence is defying the trend — and in some cases, earning salaries that stretch into seven figures.
“AI natives” are a hot commodity. Though the entry-level job market is rough overall, recent graduates with AI skills can make as much as $1 million a year, The Wall Street Journal reports. Base salaries for this group grew about 12% over the last year, per one new report, and… pic.twitter.com/zedjo0sLuJ
— Evan Kirstel #B2B #TechFluencer (@EvanKirstel) August 28, 2025
According to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the unemployment rate for new university graduates in June stood at 4.8 per cent, higher than the 4 per cent recorded across the wider workforce, according to MSN.
Analysts say automation and AI-driven restructuring are partly to blame. Yet for those with hands-on AI expertise, the outlook could not be more different.
New figures from AI staffing firm Burtch Works show base salaries for non-managerial AI roles with zero to three years’ experience rose by roughly 12 per cent between 2024 and 2025 — the most significant increase of any experience bracket.
AI specialists
The report, which analysed the pay of thousands of AI and data-science professionals, also found that AI specialists are being fast-tracked into management roles at double the rate of peers in other tech disciplines.
“There is a significant salary difference between a machine-learning engineer job and a software-engineer job,” said Anil K. Gupta, professor at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business and co-lead of its AI job tracker.
Databricks, a major data-analytics firm riding high on the AI boom, plans to triple its graduate intake this year. CEO Ali Ghodsi explained: “They’re going to come in, and they’re going to be all AI-native. We can’t for the life of us get the more senior people to adopt it.”
Booming AI sector
At Databricks, generative-AI research scientists with as little as two years of experience can command base salaries ranging from $190,000 to $260,000, according to company job postings.
🇺🇸 ENTRY-LEVEL JOB MARKET: BROKE OR MAKING $1 MILLION, NO IN-BETWEEN
Regular college grads face 4.8% unemployment while 22-year-olds who know AI are pulling seven figures.
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Including stock options, total pay packages are significantly higher. “We definitely have people, quite junior people, that have big impact, and they’re getting paid a lot,” Ghodsi said. “Under 25, you can be making a million.”
However, even within the booming AI sector, a divide is emerging. Jure Leskovec, a professor of computer science at Stanford University and co-founder of Kumo.AI, noted that top PhD students are often snapped up by tech giants before even completing their studies.
“The number of zeros is quite large,” he said. But another group — those who may lack advanced degrees yet possess strong AI skills — is also rising rapidly. “It’s almost like a next generation of a software engineer,” Leskovec added.
Jobs in machine learning
Jobs in machine learning requiring less than a year of experience now frequently pay upwards of $200,000 at companies like Roblox, according to compensation tracking site Levels. fyi.
The site has recorded 42 AI-related offers topping $1 million — nine of which were made to candidates with less than a decade of corporate experience, though some may hold PhDs.
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Scale AI, which recently finalised a reverse-acquihire arrangement with Meta Platforms, reports that 15 per cent of its staff are under the age of 25. New graduates joining the company typically earn base salaries of around $200,000.
“We’re eager to hire AI-native professionals, and many of those candidates are early in their careers,” said Ashli Shiftan, Scale AI’s head of people. The company has even gone so far as to threaten legal action against firms attempting to poach its youngest talent.
Younger candidates
One such hire is Lily Ma, a 22-year-old graduate from Carnegie Mellon University who majored in computer science with an AI concentration.
After applying to between 30 and 40 roles and completing interviews with a dozen employers, she joined Scale AI — turning down offers including a startup’s 1 per cent equity stake. “I did notice that having research experience helps a lot,” she said.
Cyril Gorlla, 23, co-founded CTGT, a startup focused on enterprise AI risk, which now counts Google among its backers. “The average age at his company is 21,” he said, noting some staff now hold equity valued at around $500,000.
Gorlla himself has received applications from ever-younger candidates, including a 16-year-old with a published paper at an AI conference. “I definitely did not see that a few years ago,” he added.
