AI at Work: Rise of the GenAI Consultant – Indeed Hiring Lab

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Growth in GenAI roles over the past year has been driven by consultants who are likely intended to help implement the tools, rather than develop them.

Key Points:

While GenAI terms appear in only about three in every 1,000 job postings, they are growing rapidly.
The share of US job postings mentioning GenAI or related terms has skyrocketed over the past year, up 170% from January 2024 to January 2025.
Software development, data science, and related roles dominate GenAI job postings.
However, over the past year, AI language has surged in postings for management consulting roles, which now account for 12.4% of GenAI job postings, reflecting a growing focus on AI implementation in the consulting sector.

The share of US job postings mentioning GenAI, while still small overall, has climbed rapidly from virtually nothing prior to late 2022, when the first generation of GenAI tools were widely introduced. And while the rapid growth of GenAI’s presence in the workplace shows no signs of slowing, there are indicators that the nature of the growth is shifting, driven by a heightened focus on the implementation of GenAI tools, in addition to their ongoing development.

As of January 2024, only about one job in 1,000 (0.1% of all jobs on Indeed) mentioned GenAI. By early 2025, that ratio had roughly tripled to 0.3%, a sign of rapidly accelerating employer interest in GenAI.

Line graph titled “US GenAI job postings are rare but growing.” With a vertical axis ranging from 0.0 to 0.3% and a horizontal axis ranging from January 2020 to January 2025, the graph shows the percentage of job postings containing GenAI terms, and the recent rise of that percentage.

But as rapid overall growth in GenAI mentions has continued, the types of jobs overtly noting GenAI are changing. In January 2024, the top 10 job titles mentioning GenAI were primarily for “makers” of the burgeoning technology, including machine learning engineers, data scientists, and software architects/engineers. Fast forward a year, and those jobs are still prominent, but have been pushed down the list by another quickly growing role: management consultants. These professionals traditionally focus on helping businesses (their own or others) navigate change and improve processes — and, increasingly, to implement GenAI technologies.

In January 2024, just 0.2% of all GenAI job postings were for management consultant roles, compared to 6.9% and 5.7% of job postings for machine learning engineers and data scientists, respectively. By January 2025, consultant roles accounted for 12.4% of all jobs mentioning GenAI. While the rise in GenAI consultants can be traced back to the hiring behavior of a select number of large employers, it represents growing business demand for AI implementation services and a possible step forward in AI adoption.

A table titled “Top 10 Generative Artificial Intelligence Job Titles on Indeed” shows the 10 roles that accounted for the highest share of GenAI jobs in January 2024 and January 2025. While many roles like machine learning engineer appear in both lists, management consultant jobs mentioning GenAI implementation have skyrocketed in the last year — growing from a share of 0.2% to 12.4% in a single year.

But even as consulting roles account for a larger share of GenAI jobs, demand in fields like machine learning engineering and data science is still growing rapidly. Data from the Indeed Job Posting Index shows that employer demand for software development and mathematical occupations (including data scientists) has stabilized in the last year.

Machine learning engineers and other technical roles continue to be increasingly focused on GenAI technologies. In the last year alone, GenAI mentions rose by 9.5 percentage points for machine learning engineers and 9 points for data scientists to 29% and 18% of these job titles, respectively. These increases represent major changes in the job requirements of many technical roles and reflect a growing wave of support for GenAI technologies.

A table titled “GenAI mentions have grown in many roles since last year” shows the 10 roles that accounted for the highest share of GenAI jobs in January 2025 and their one-year change in GenAI mentions. In January, a quarter of management consultant jobs on Indeed mentioned GenAI in one form or another.

Consulting jobs have seen major job requirement transformations in the last year — driven by growing business demand for GenAI implementation. These shifts represent the first jobs to see major increases in GenAI mentions outside of tech and data science and are an important signal of where businesses are headed. As companies implement GenAI and transform, many knowledge work roles are also likely to change. For workers whose skills overlap with GenAI capabilities, these shifts represent a significant opportunity to invest in AI skills now, and stay ahead of the curve.

Methodology

The analysis involved extracting job postings directly related to Generative AI, using specific keywords found in job descriptions indicating its presence, such as “Generative AI,” “Large Language Models,” and “Chat GPT.” Job titles with fewer than 1,000 unique job postings in January 2025 were omitted from the analysis.

For more information on how the capabilities of GenAI overlap with occupational skill requirements, see our recent research.