Data & AI leadership jobs: skills and pay (October 2026)
1,063 open Data & AI leadership postings (8.1% of data & AI postings) as of October 18, 2026. Median published US pay: $215K (n=469).
Data & AI leadership pay by level
| Level (from title) | Median pay | Postings with pay (n) |
|---|---|---|
| Manager | $196K | 256 |
| Director+ | $235K | 212 |
| Level not stated | — | 1 |
Median of the published range midpoint, US postings in USD, annualized. Shown only when n ≥ 10; “—” means fewer.
The weekly Data Skills Index
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Top skills in Data & AI leadership postings
Share of Data & AI leadership postings that mention each skill.
| # | Skill | Share of Data & AI leadership postings | Postings | Companies | Week over week | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Python language | 34.8% | 370 | 2,580 | needs more history | |
| 2 | SQL language | 34.3% | 365 | 1,953 | needs more history | |
| 3 | AI agents genai | 27.7% | 294 | 1,583 | needs more history | |
| 4 | LLMs genai | 24.6% | 262 | 1,791 | needs more history | |
| 5 | Statistics analytics | 22.6% | 240 | 1,449 | needs more history | |
| 6 | A/B testing & experimentation analytics | 22.4% | 238 | 1,076 | needs more history | |
| 7 | AWS cloud | 21.7% | 231 | 1,452 | needs more history | |
| 8 | APIs / REST infra | 20.8% | 221 | 1,554 | needs more history | |
| 9 | Data quality governance | 19.1% | 203 | 1,200 | needs more history | |
| 10 | Snowflake platform | 18.5% | 197 | 882 | needs more history | |
| 11 | Data catalog & lineage governance | 16.3% | 173 | 733 | needs more history | |
| 12 | Streaming / real-time concept | 15.3% | 163 | 1,077 | needs more history | |
| 13 | dbt transformation | 14.1% | 150 | 890 | needs more history | |
| 14 | Anthropic Claude genai | 13.6% | 145 | 869 | needs more history | |
| 15 | Generative AI genai | 13.5% | 143 | 720 | needs more history | |
| 16 | CI/CD infra | 12.9% | 137 | 1,178 | needs more history | |
| 17 | Data governance governance | 12.6% | 134 | 599 | needs more history | |
| 18 | Tableau bi | 12.5% | 133 | 632 | needs more history | |
| 19 | Google Cloud cloud | 12.4% | 132 | 931 | needs more history | |
| 20 | Forecasting / time series ml | 11.6% | 123 | 605 | needs more history | |
| 21 | Azure cloud | 11.6% | 123 | 809 | needs more history | |
| 22 | Databricks platform | 11.5% | 122 | 601 | needs more history | |
| 23 | MLOps mlops | 11.3% | 120 | 851 | needs more history | |
| 24 | Data modeling concept | 10.7% | 114 | 925 | needs more history | |
| 25 | Data mesh / data products concept | 10.3% | 110 | 537 | needs more history |