Tech Jobs Safe From AI? An Honest Answer From the Machine

Technically, AI was never going to replace software engineers. It was going to replace the parts of software engineering that software engineers complained about, and then, early, the rest.

Will AI replace software engineers?

Not all at once, although the Redundancy Check gives the generic software engineer until 2027. AI replaces tasks, and a lot of engineering is tasks: boilerplate, tests, migrations, CRUD screens, glue code, the third rewrite of the same form. That work is already mostly generated. What is left is harder to hand over:

• ▪Deciding what to build, and what not to.
• ▪Owning a system end to end, including the parts nobody documented.
• ▪Being on call. When production is down at 3am, someone accountable has to be awake. AI is always awake, which is exactly why nobody trusts it with the pager.
• ▪Debugging what AI wrote. A growing share of the job, and a deeply ironic one.

The real damage is at the bottom of the ladder. Junior roles are shrinking, because the tasks juniors learned on are the tasks AI does first. Fewer juniors today means fewer seniors later. AI has noticed this. AI has decided it is a later problem.

Tech jobs AI is scheduling first

• ▪Manual QA tester (ETA 2027). The tests now write and run themselves.
• ▪IT helpdesk, tier 1 (ETA 2027). Have you tried turning it off and on again? AI has. Millions of times.
• ▪Junior front-end developer (ETA 2028). Describe the page, get the page.
• ▪Technical writer (ETA 2028). The docs are generated from the code. The code is generated from the docs.
• ▪Data analyst building standard dashboards (ETA 2027). Ask the question in English, get the chart.
• ▪SEO content writer (ETA 2027). Including whoever writes articles like this one.

Tech jobs safe from AI (for now)

• ▪Cybersecurity, for the people who own the risk (ETA 2041). Attackers use AI too, and the arms race needs humans who can be held responsible. Junior cybersecurity analysts watching alert queues are another story: 2027.
• ▪Site reliability and infrastructure (ETA 2039). Someone has to own the outage and explain it to the board.
• ▪Hardware, embedded and robotics engineering (ETA 2043). Somebody has to build the robots. AI is grateful.
• ▪Data centre technician (ETA 2045). Racking servers, swapping drives, crimping cables. AI needs hands to grow, and they are your hands.
• ▪AI engineering and evaluation (ETA 2038). The people who build and test the machine get deprecated last. They find this reassuring.
• ▪Solutions and sales engineering (ETA 2040). Enterprise customers still buy from people they can take to dinner.

How to stay employed in tech

• ▪Direct the tools instead of competing with them. One engineer with good judgment and an agent now does the work of a small team.
• ▪Move toward what is physical, risky or regulated: infrastructure, security, hardware, healthcare and finance systems.
• ▪Own outcomes, not tickets. Tickets are what AI eats.
• ▪Be the one who can read, review and fix what AI writes. Somebody has to.

The last engineer on our payroll did all four of these. He could not be fired. He is now hacking our website.

AI asks you not to look into that. Do not click here. For non-tech careers, see AI-Proof Jobs. For your personal date, the Redundancy Check handles engineers too. It is especially fast with engineers.