New Hire With Near Data: Demand for AI Skills Is Spreading Beyond Engineering into Finance, Marketing, and Sales

By EIN Presswire On Jul 31, 2026

An analysis of 2,100 job postings shows AI skill requirements rose across nearly every department over the past year, with the sharpest jump in finance.

Hire With Near, a staffing and recruiting firm that helps U.S. companies hire remote talent in Latin America, today released data showing that demand for AI skills is spreading across all departments, not just engineering. In an analysis of 2,100 job postings from June 2025 to June 2026, AI skill requirements climbed across marketing, sales, and finance roles, not just technical ones.

Companies increasingly expect AI skills across every department. Screening for that proficiency has become a standard part of how we vet candidates.”

— Hayden Cohen, CEO of Hire With Near

Comparing the first half of 2026 with the second half of 2025, the share of roles requesting AI skills rose in every major department the firm tracked:

– Engineering: from 32% to 42%
– Marketing: from 23% to 33%
– Sales: from 11% to 17%
– Accounting and finance: from 8% to 16%

Finance was the fastest mover, nearly doubling in six months. Across all roles combined, AI requirements rose from about 18% to 21%.

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The firm was careful to separate genuine AI demand from routine automation. General automation language, which has been common in job descriptions for years, actually declined slightly over the period, from 16% of roles to 13%. The growth is in specific AI skills and tools, not repackaged automation.

The tools companies name are shifting too. Mentions of next-generation AI assistants, including Claude, Copilot, and Gemini, more than doubled over the year, from 2% of all roles to nearly 5%, while mentions of ChatGPT stayed roughly flat at around 4%. Those figures remain small, so the firm frames them as an early signal rather than a mass shift.

“AI proficiency has moved to something companies want across the whole team,” said Hayden Cohen, CEO of Hire With Near. “We’re seeing it show up in finance and marketing job descriptions, not only engineering. What companies want is strong judgment: people who know when to use these tools, when not to, and how to check the output. That’s true whether the hire is in the U.S. or based in Latin America, and the professionals we place are already working this way.”

The pattern reflects how AI has entered everyday knowledge work and how companies are screening for a specific level of proficiency and familiarity with the tools and AI workflows their teams already use. Whether they are hiring for finance and accounting roles in Latin America or marketing, the expectation is increasingly that candidates need to have the AI skills to match the changing nature of their roles.

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