AI 'prompt engineer' jobs can pay up to $335,000 a year and don't always require a background in tech

•     The rise in generative AI tools like ChatGPT has created a hot market for "prompt engineers."

•     "Prompt engineers" train AI chatbots to improve their responses.

•     The gigs pay up to $335,000 a year and don't always require a tech degree.

Tech is known for high-paying jobs — and for one new hot job in the industry, you don't even need a degree in STEM.

The rise of generative AI tools like ChatGPT is creating a need for "prompt engineers," people who write questions and prose for AI chatbots to test and improve their answers. Some of these roles have salaries as high as $335,000 and don't require degrees in tech.

Anthropic, an artificial intelligence safety and research company, currently has an open role for a "prompt engineer and librarian" with a salary range between $175,000 and $335,000, as first reported by Bloomberg.

The post says the role involves building "a library of high quality prompts or prompt chains to accomplish a variety of tasks, with an easy guide to help users search for the one that meets their needs," and building "a set of tutorials and interactive tools that teach the art of prompt engineering to our customers."

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Applicants who have basic programming skills and "a high level" of familiarity with large language models would make a good fit, per the posting, but Anthropic says it wants people to apply "even if you do not believe you meet every single qualification."

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, has spoken about the need for prompt engineers. In February, he tweeted that "writing a really great prompt for a chatbot persona is an amazingly high-leverage skill."

Anna Bernstein, a prompt engineer at Copy.ai, was a freelance writer and historical research assistant before she started working with AI tools.

"I love the 'mad scientist' part of the job where I'm able to come up with a dumb idea for a prompt and see it actually work," Bernstein told Insider. "As a poet, the role also feeds into my obsessive nature with approaching language. It's a really strange intersection of my literary background and analytical thinking."

The market for prompt engineers is growing. PromptBase, a prompt marketplace that launched last June, allows people to hire prompt engineers or sell their prompts.

Despite the opportunities in prompt engineering for people without tech backgrounds, most high-paying roles do require people with more experience and higher levels of education in tech-focused areas, recruiters told Bloomberg.

"Salaries start at £40,000, but we've got candidates on our database looking for £200,000 to £300,000 a year," Mark Standen, who works at Hays, a recruitment agency in the UK and Ireland, told Bloomberg. "Expert prompt engineers can name their price."

While the market for prompt engineers is growing quickly, some are warning that it might not necessarily be the hottest role in the long run.

"I have a strong suspicion that 'prompt engineering' is not going to be a big deal in the long-term & prompt engineer is not the job of the future," Ethan Mollick, a professor at the Wharton School, tweeted in February.

While being able to interact with generative AI tools through prompts "is of high value," Adrian Weller, a director of research in machine learning at the University of Cambridge, told Bloomberg that, "I wouldn't be so sure that it will continue for a long time. Don't dwell too much on the current state of prompt engineering. It's starting to evolve quite quickly."

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