Also called: AI Prompt Designer, AI Interaction Designer
Writes and tests the instructions that make AI models behave well in products, from chatbots to coding tools.
A prompt engineer designs system instructions for a customer-service AI, builds test sets of tricky questions, measures results, and works with engineers to fix mistakes. The role is changing quickly as AI tools improve.
Approximate: anchored on Bureau of Labor Statistics data for a broader job group.
Bachelor's degree (4-year), about 4 years after high school. Bachelor's in computer science, linguistics, or another field, plus hands-on AI experience.
Ways in: 4-year college, Self-taught. Training cost: $15k – $60k.
Majors to look at: Computer Science, Linguistics, Cognitive Science.
Growing about average. A brand-new, fast-changing title; BLS does not track it separately.
High risk for 10 years. Newer models need far less hand-tuned prompting and AI writes its own prompts; the standalone title is merging into AI engineering.
Classes: Computer Science, English (writing), AP Statistics, Linguistics or a language.
Official data: O*NET occupation 15-1299.
Career Universe is an early version. Pay, training and AI-risk figures are estimates to start your own research, not verified facts. The research was written with AI research assistants, checked by validation scripts and spot-checked by hand. Check anything important with schools, employers and official sources. How the numbers work.