Pave's Hot Jobs Index is updated with Q3 data, and the headline is simple: companies want specialists. But the importance of specialization varies by department.
The index scores every tech job family from -100 (cooling fast) to +100 (heating fast), based on how quickly its share of new hires and total headcount is changing. For Q3, the two coldest jobs are HR Generalist (-91) and Marketing Generalist (-90). The two hottest are AI Engineer (97.4) and Forward Deployed Engineer (97.0).
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Here’s what we found interesting in looking through the latest updates.
Forward Deployed Engineer is officially hot
In Q2, Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) was on our Emerging Jobs watchlist. Now, it's the second-hottest job in tech, with a score of 97.0.
A Forward Deployed Engineer is an engineer who embeds with customers to get a product working inside their systems. It's a role that’s fully focused on deploying solutions within a customer environment, and it has become incredibly important for AI companies that are trying to help customers use and implement their models and solutions. For an in-depth analysis, check out McKinsey’s recent explainer on the role.
Less surprising is that AI Engineer continues to be the #1 job for the third quarter in a row. In the AI era, companies are looking for talent who can implement and build AI systems and products. It’ll be interesting to see how this role evolves over time, and whether the skills for building AI products shift to become an expectation of the software engineering job.
The generalist cooldown
HR Generalist and Marketing Generalist are the two coldest jobs in tech. Strategic Business Operations (-88) and Chief of Staff (-78) are on the cold jobs list, too. What all four roles have in common is that they’re designed to be more broad rather than specialized. Specialized jobs, on the other hand, are growing. For example, while HR generalist is a cold job, the role of compensation and total rewards is on the rise—a more specialized job family within the HR function.
We see the same trend in the marketing function as well. Marketing generalist is a cold job, but marketing analytics landed on the hot jobs list—a role that is both more specialized and more technical.
On the other hand, engineering bucks this trend, as the specializations within this function appear to be condensing. The fact that frontend engineering and system architecture engineering are on the cold job list is proof of this. One explanation: Coding agents are fueling the expectation that a generalist software engineer can work across the tech stack without specialized skills.
It’s worth noting that just because a job is cold doesn’t mean it’s going away. The index measures momentum, so a cold role can still employ plenty of people, even if companies are hiring fewer of them than they used to.
It’s also important to point out that a cooling of demand doesn’t equate to a cooling in pay. Pave data showed that a job can lose two-thirds of its hiring and still cost more to fill than it did before. Again, measuring momentum shows a cooling trend in the number of opportunities that are available, not the price behind them.
Selling gets more technical
Across the go-to-market (GTM) function, the specialized roles that are in demand skew technical. Within the top 10 hot jobs, we find three roles that are all focused on selling or retaining customers with a technical approach:
- Technical pre-sales consultant
- Technical account management
- Forward deployed engineer
Increasingly in tech, buyers expect the person across the table to scope integrations, answer security questions, and show the product working on their own data before they sign. After the sale, retention depends on configuration, especially with AI model adoption, and the FDE takes this furthest by embedding directly with the customer. Together, these roles suggest companies are paying for technical fluency at every stage of the customer lifecycle, from pre-sale through renewal.
We also see this on the revenue operations side. The go-to-market engineer, or GTM engineer, is the hottest emerging job from Q3, and it’s rapidly growing quarter-over-quarter. It’s one of the latest examples of the “engineer” title popping up in less expected functions across the org chart.
Demand for oversight on the rise
In Q2, the compliance roles on the hot jobs list were Data Governance, Internal Audit, and Information Security. This time, Internal Audit, Business Process, and Treasurer joined Data Governance as hot jobs. With the rapid adoption of new tools and AI spending continuing to rise, companies are hiring to monitor their data, their money, and their processes.
Business Process might stand out as a surprising entry on the hot jobs list. However, the actual job titles within this job family include AI Transformation Lead and AI Enablement—emerging jobs that push AI adoption within an organization and drive the process change. These jobs continue to gain momentum in the AI era.
As the market evolves around AI, specialization and technical skillsets seem likely to continue to carry demand among tech companies. For employees, consider what specialized skillsets you could develop for your job function of interest. Or, consider how you could make yourself more technical. In the AI era, not everyone needs to become an engineer, but exploring with AI will be valuable to employers.
Rithika is a data scientist at Pave focused on compensation insights, analytics, data-storytelling, and community. Before Pave, she worked at Karat Financial building a credit card product and launching a personal finance tool for content creators.
About the data
The Pave Hot Jobs Score runs from -100 to +100 and combines two signals: hiring momentum and workforce prevalence. Full methodology and the complete top-ten lists can be found on the Hot Jobs Index page.
