The Rise of AI Jobs at Small Businesses?

by Tom Bowen & Andrew Chamberlain

At a Glance

• AI hiring is still rare for small businesses. Fewer than 1 in 1,000 small business employees hired in 2025 have “AI” in their job title – but rapid acceleration in hiring suggests this is just the beginning.

• AI hiring at small businesses has exploded 8x since 2019. Hiring growth accelerated sharply in the past two years. Small businesses hired as many “AI” titled employees in 2025 as the previous four years combined.

• You don’t need to be big to hire AI talent. Two-thirds of AI hires went to companies with fewer than 20 employees, with even the smallest businesses (1-4 employees) accounting for one in five AI hires.

• Tech and professional services dominate. Small businesses in these two sectors make up 83% of all small business AI hiring. The San Francisco Bay Area alone accounts for a disproportionate share, with one in 100 small business tech hires having “AI” in their title.

Introduction

Are small businesses hiring AI-focused roles today? Most discussion of AI and hiring focuses on large, enterprise-scale companies. However, we found a small but growing share of small businesses on Gusto are hiring for AI roles – and that the pace has accelerated rapidly in the past two years. 

In this analysis, we look at the share of employees on small business payrolls with “AI” job titles, such as AI Engineer, Head of AI, AI Developer, and so on. And we examine how AI hiring has shifted since 2019, and which industries and cities in America are leading the pack on AI hiring among small businesses.

These unique data offer an early glimpse into how artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape work, even at America’s smallest companies.

AI hiring is still rare – but growing fast

AI hiring at America’s small businesses remains rare – but it’s accelerating at a remarkable pace. Among the 400,000+ small businesses in Gusto’s payroll database, fewer than one in a thousand employees hired in 2025 has “AI” literally in their job title. But that share represents an eight-fold increase since 2019, with growth sharply accelerating over the past two years.

The smallest businesses – those with just 1-4 employees – account for more than one in five AI hires. Businesses with 5-9 employees represented one quarter of AI hiring. Overall, this suggests that AI strategy isn’t just a phenomenon among large companies with dedicated data science or engineering teams. In many cases, small boutique consultancies and tiny startups are bringing on AI expertise. And it appears that the smallest tech and professional services startups are leading the charge on AI job titles, not 50-250-person companies that are more established. 

The evolution of AI job titles

Our data reveal that AI job titles themselves tell an interesting story of how small businesses are incorporating AI into their business models. In 2019, there were just 70 unique AI-related job titles across all of Gusto’s small businesses. By 2025, that number had exploded to 587 unique titles – a more than eight-fold increase that suggests rapid experimentation and specialization in AI roles as technology has evolved and diffused throughout tools used by small businesses.

The early years (2019-2020): Training and implementation

In 2019 and 2020, “AI Trainer” dominated the landscape, topping the list of most common AI job titles. These were likely employees focused on training machine learning models, labeling data, or teaching AI systems. “AI Implementation Specialist” roles were also common, suggesting businesses needed help deploying and integrating AI tools. Only three of the top 10 titles during this period were for engineering roles. 

Top AI job titles in 2019:

1. AI Trainer

2. AI Engineer

3. AI Implementation Specialist

4. AI Engineering Intern

5. AI Implementation Specialist Intern

6. AI Resident

7. Chief AI Officer

8. Head of AI

9. Sr. AI Engineer

10. AI Research

The AI revolution (2021-2023): Engineering takes center stage

By 2023 – the first full year after the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT – “AI Engineer” overtook AI Trainer as the most common title, a position it has held ever since. This shift suggests small businesses began moving from implementation and training to building and developing AI capabilities in-house. We also saw the acceleration of AI leadership roles such as “Head of AI” during this period. And engineering roles made up 5 of the top 10 most common hires. 

Top AI job titles in 2023:

1. AI Engineer

2. AI Trainer

3. Head of AI

4. Senior AI Engineer

5. AI Intern

6. AI Research Scientist Intern

7. Founding AI Engineer

8. Principal AI Engineer

9. AI Software Engineer

10. AI & Machines Learning Mentor

The Present (2024-2025): Scale and Specialization

By 2024 and 2025, AI hiring entered a new phase. “AI Engineer” became even more dominant among small business hiring, and engineering or developer roles now make up 7 of the top 10 job titles. And the early title of “AI Trainer” has fallen completely off the list of top titles. Notably, in 2025 small businesses are hiring more AI interns than ever before, a clear sign of maturation of the function. Rather than relying solely on senior specialists, companies are beginning to build junior talent pipelines for AI work, suggesting that these roles are becoming more structured, scalable, and institutionalized.

Top AI job titles in 2025:

1. AI Engineer

2. Head of AI

3. AI Intern

4. AI Engineer Intern

5. AI Engineering Intern

6. Senior AI Engineer

7. Founding AI Engineer

8. AI Developer

9. AI Research Intern

10. AI Software Engineer

AI hires concentrated in tech and professional services

The industry breakdown in AI hiring by small businesses reveals just how concentrated AI hiring remains in 2025. Two sectors dominate completely. Professional Services and Information (Technology) together account for 83.4% of all AI hiring at small businesses this year.

Tech companies in our data had the highest “AI penetration rate” – the share of total hires with AI in their job title – at 0.95%. Put differently, in 2025 about one in every 100 hires among small businesses in tech in 2025 had “AI” in their job title. That’s more than double the AI penetration rate in Professional Services (0.38).

The Professional Services sector likely includes many small businesses that are AI consultancies, data analytics firms, and service providers helping other businesses implement AI. Tech companies, meanwhile, are primarily companies that are building AI products and services directly.

Other industries in the small business economy are lagging far behind on AI hiring in 2025. Traditional small business sectors such as retail trade, construction, and accommodation and food services each account for less than 1% of AI hiring this year. Their AI penetration rates are essentially zero, with fewer than 1 in 10,000 employees hired having AI in their title.

San Francisco Bay Area dominates small business AI hiring

The geography of AI hiring at small businesses tells a story of extreme concentration. In 2025, tech hubs dominated AI hiring among small businesses on Gusto, with the San Francisco Bay Area leading by a wide margin. 

The top five cities of San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York, Austin and Seattle made up over 21% of all AI hiring among small businesses – more than the next 16 highest cities combined. 

New York, despite being the nation’s largest city, lags behind both Bay Area cities in both absolute numbers and AI penetration rate. Austin and Seattle – both thriving tech hubs – show similar patterns of high AI hiring rates driven by their thriving tech sectors.

What’s perhaps most striking is where small business AI hiring is not happening. Large cities like Los Angeles, Dallas, and Miami show AI penetration rates well below the national average. Traditional business centers like Houston and Chicago also lag behind tech-focused cities.

These geographic patterns mostly reflect industry patterns: AI hiring at small businesses remains highly concentrated in places with existing tech ecosystems, venture capital access, and pools of technical talent. For other types of small businesses in most of the country, hiring someone with “AI” in their job title remains exceedingly rare.

Methodology

This analysis draws on payroll data from more than 400,000 small businesses on the Gusto platform, examining employees hired from 2019 through 2025. “AI employees” are defined as those with “AI” appearing as a standalone word in their job title. This is an intentionally narrow definition that captures only the most explicit AI roles, rather than trying to capture the broader impact of AI on small business employment.