By Keiran Hathorn, Founder and Director, Big Wave Digital. Sydney, August 2026.
AI Engineer is the fastest-growing job in Australia. It is also the one Australian employers consistently cannot fill. On current Technology Council of Australia projections, the country will be short of up to 60,000 AI specialists by 2027, even after the AI workforce roughly doubles. This article explains why the shortage exists, why it will not fix itself quickly, and what it means if you are hiring or working in AI right now.
The numbers behind this article come from our flagship report, The State of AI Hiring in Australia 2026, which cites each public source and date in full.
The shortage in three numbers
- 40,000 to 85,000. Australia’s AI specialist workforce is projected to grow from about 40,000 people in 2024 to around 85,000 by 2027. That is strong growth by any measure. (Technology Council of Australia)
- 140,000. Demand for AI specialists is expected to reach roughly 140,000 over the same period, leaving a shortfall of up to 60,000 people. (Technology Council of Australia)
- 150 per cent. AI Engineer tops LinkedIn’s 2026 Jobs on the Rise list for Australia, with roughly 150 per cent growth in AI engineer roles, and AI literacy is now the most requested skill across the wider job market. (LinkedIn, 2026)
The workforce is growing fast. Demand is growing faster. That is the whole problem in one sentence.
Reason one: demand exploded faster than any training pipeline can respond
The share of Australian job descriptions mentioning AI roughly doubled in a single year, from about 2.8 per cent to 5.8 per cent, according to Indeed Hiring Lab Australia. Business adoption has followed the same curve, with one public measure of Australian businesses using AI climbing from about 69 per cent in 2024 to 89 per cent in 2025.
Universities and bootcamps cannot produce senior engineers on that timeline. A graduate can learn to build a model in a year. The people employers are actually short of, engineers who can deploy, monitor and govern AI systems in production, take years of real-world experience to develop. Demand moved in eighteen months. Supply moves in five-year cycles.
Reason two: the shortage is a seniority problem, not a headcount problem
Entry-level AI talent is not especially scarce. What is scarce is production experience. The roles Australian employers struggle hardest to fill are machine learning and AI engineers with deployment and MLOps experience, AI solutions architects, AI governance analysts and Heads of AI. Building a model in a notebook is now common. Shipping it, keeping it up and making it pay is not.
This is why the gap cannot be closed by graduates alone. Every organisation standing up an AI function wants the same short list of people who have already done it somewhere else.
Reason three: AI hiring sits on top of an already stretched tech labour market
The AI shortage is not happening in isolation. ACS Digital Pulse estimates Australia needs around 1.3 million tech workers by 2030, roughly 312,000 more than current supply trends deliver. AI roles compete for the same engineering, data and platform talent as every other technology function. When the underlying pool is short, the fastest-growing segment of it feels the squeeze first and hardest.
Reason four: global demand prices Australian employers out of parts of the market
The best Australian AI engineers are not only fielding Australian offers. Remote-friendly global companies, well-funded AI-native firms and quantitative trading businesses all bid for the same people. Public market data puts average earnings for people working in data and AI in Australia at around A$157,000, well above general software roles, and senior specialist pay runs far higher. For a full breakdown by role and seniority, see our AI Salary Guide Sydney 2026 and AI Engineer Salary Guide Australia 2026.
Employers benchmarking against last year’s salary data are, in practice, recruiting for a market that no longer exists.
What it means for employers
The shortage rewards employers who move differently.
- Benchmark against live roles, not last year’s survey. AI pay moves quickly enough that stale numbers lose candidates before the first interview.
- Hire for trajectory as well as ticked boxes. If everyone chases the same finished senior profile, the finished senior profile gets five offers. Strong engineers one step below, given real production scope, close the gap fast.
- Move fast and cut stages. Slow, multi-stage processes are where good AI candidates are lost to quicker competitors.
- Consider contract for scarce, time-bound work. Experienced AI engineers are often available on contract at day rates that reflect the scarcity of the skill set.
If you are planning an AI hire, our 2026 playbook on how to hire AI engineers in Sydney covers the process end to end.
What it means for candidates
For people with genuine AI capability this is one of the strongest markets in the country, and the premium follows production. The biggest pay step goes to engineers who can ship, deploy, monitor and scale models rather than only build them. Generative AI, LLM and MLOps skills carry the clearest premium right now, and broad AI literacy is lifting opportunities well beyond specialist teams. See the 10 most in-demand AI roles in Australia 2026 for where demand is hottest.
Will the shortage ease?
Not soon. Even on the optimistic trajectory, where the AI workforce more than doubles by 2027, demand still outruns supply by up to 60,000 people, and the Technology Council of Australia projects AI-related roles could reach 200,000 by 2030. The structural drivers, adoption spreading into every sector, a global market for the same talent, and a training pipeline that cannot compress experience, all point one way. Australia’s AI constraint is increasingly people, not technology.
Frequently asked questions
How short is Australia of AI engineers?
On Technology Council of Australia projections, Australia’s AI specialist workforce is expected to reach around 85,000 by 2027 against demand of roughly 140,000, a shortfall of up to 60,000 people.
Why can’t the gap be filled by graduates?
The shortage is concentrated in mid and senior production-grade roles. Employers are short of engineers who can deploy, monitor and govern AI at scale, and that experience takes years to build regardless of how many people enter the field.
What is the fastest-growing job in Australia?
AI Engineer tops LinkedIn’s 2026 Jobs on the Rise list for Australia, with roughly 150 per cent growth in AI engineer roles.
What should employers do about the shortage?
Benchmark pay against live roles, define roles precisely, run fast hiring processes, consider contract talent for time-bound work, and be willing to hire strong engineers one step below the finished profile and grow them.
Methodology and sources
Every figure in this article is drawn from a cited public source: Technology Council of Australia workforce projections (reported 2023 to 2025), LinkedIn Jobs on the Rise 2026 for Australia, Indeed Hiring Lab Australia (2025 to 2026), ACS Digital Pulse (2024 to 2025) and public salary market data, supplemented by Big Wave Digital’s own placement observations. Full source detail and dates are in the methodology section of The State of AI Hiring in Australia 2026. Projections are inherently uncertain and figures vary by source and definition.
About the author
Keiran Hathorn is the Founder and Director of Big Wave Digital, the Sydney-based specialist technology, AI and digital recruitment agency he founded in 2010. Over the 16 years since, Big Wave Digital has placed engineers, data and AI specialists and technology leaders for employers across Sydney and Australia.
Related reading: The State of AI Hiring in Australia 2026 · 10 Most In-Demand AI Roles in Australia 2026 · AI Salary Guide Sydney 2026 · AI Recruitment Agency Sydney
