1. Seven New Jobs AI Created — From Claude Evangelist ($240K) to Vibe Coder
The org chart is morphing. An entirely new class of jobs has emerged in the last two years, with titles that didn’t exist in 2024 — and the salary ranges are eye-watering.
Here’s the full list from TNW’s survey of the landscape:
- Forward Deployed Engineer — Embedded with customers to build tailored AI solutions. Job postings up 19x year-over-year. Palantir, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, AWS all hiring. $115K–$200K+. The hottest title in tech.
- Claude Evangelist — Anthropic is paying $240K for someone to be the company’s face in the startup ecosystem. Seven years of founder-builder experience required. More than double the average comms director salary.
- AI Philosopher — Anthropic has one. Google DeepMind has one. Ensuring models align with human values pays $212K–$231K. Philosophy departments everywhere just got a pipeline they didn’t expect.
- Internal AI Accelerator — Stripe’s “Forward Deployed AI Accelerator” embeds inside marketing to make “AI the default mode for all work.” These roles exist to push existing employees to use AI harder — which raises obvious questions about those who don’t adapt.
- Chief AI Officer — The C-suite role. Makes sure everyone else in the company uses AI. Growing fast.
- Vibe Coder — Someone who uses AI coding tools to build software without traditional programming skills. $108K. The job title that sounds fake but pays real money.
- AI Gig Worker — Training models, labelling data, reviewing outputs. The invisible workforce behind every AI product.
Why it matters: The new jobs pay better than the ones they’re replacing. That’s the uncomfortable truth. A Claude Evangelist makes $240K. A vibe coder makes $108K without knowing how to code. Meanwhile, the roles being eliminated were often lower-paid. The AI job market isn’t destroying work — it’s bifurcating it. Either you’re in the new AI economy, or you’re competing with it.
2. Salesforce Is Rewriting Every Role in the Company — AI Is the Reason
Salesforce is undergoing an internal restructuring that redefines job roles across the entire organisation, driven by the AI shift that CEO Marc Benioff has called the company’s biggest transformation since cloud computing.
The details are still emerging, but the direction is clear: Salesforce is mapping every role against what AI can do, redefining responsibilities accordingly, and eliminating positions that overlap with AI capabilities. The company is projected to spend $300 million on Anthropic tokens this year alone — more than some countries spend on AI — so the commitment is real.
This follows the pattern we’ve seen across enterprise software: the vendors who sell AI tools are the first to reorganise around them. It’s like watching a personal trainer who’s also their own first client.
Why it matters: When a 70,000-person company like Salesforce rewrites every role definition, it’s not experimentation — it’s template-setting. Hundreds of thousands of other companies use Salesforce’s practices as a benchmark. The AI restructuring pattern will propagate.
3. Google Cloud Is Hiring an Army of Forward Deployed Engineers
Google Cloud is building a massive team of forward deployed engineers to bring AI solutions directly to enterprise customers — part of an aggressive push to catch up in the enterprise AI deployment race.
The forward deployed engineer model, popularised by Palantir, embeds an engineer directly with the customer rather than shipping off-the-shelf software. Google is scaling this approach to compete with OpenAI’s enterprise push, Anthropic’s consulting-style engagement, and AWS’s established enterprise relationships.
Job postings for this role category are up 19x year-over-year across the industry. The role combines deep product knowledge with hands-on customisation — what Palantir CEO Alex Karp compared to “a seasoned waiter in a French restaurant.”
Why it matters: The “hire an army of deployers” model is how enterprise AI actually gets adopted. It’s not about better models — it’s about bodies in rooms making models work with messy enterprise data. For anyone considering an AI career, forward deployed engineering is the role with the most immediate demand and the clearest path to impact.
4. SAP Deploys Fully Autonomous Robots in Live Logistics Warehouse
SAP and Cyberwave have deployed fully autonomous AI-powered robots in a live warehouse running SAP logistics software — no human operators required for picking, packing, or sorting.
The deployment is significant because SAP’s enterprise software is the backbone of global supply chains. If autonomous robots are integrating directly with SAP, the automation pipeline goes from “cool demo” to “operational reality” for thousands of companies running the same stack.
The robots don’t follow pre-programmed paths. They use AI to navigate dynamic warehouse environments, handle exceptions, and coordinate with each other. SAP says this is the first fully autonomous AI-robot deployment inside a live SAP logistics environment.
Why it matters: Warehouse and logistics have been the canary in the coal mine for physical AI automation. Amazon’s Kiva robots changed e-commerce. Now SAP is bringing the same capability to the standard enterprise logistics stack. For NZ companies running SAP — and there are many — this isn’t a future scenario. The integration path already exists.
5. NZ Organisations Are Accelerating AI Adoption — Without Governance to Match
A new report from Commvault and the AI Forum NZ shows New Zealand organisations are deploying AI rapidly, but governance is not keeping pace.
Only 28% of NZ organisations audited their AI before deployment. Just 37% are confident they could detect governance breaches. Agentic AI deployment is at 30%, but identity management for AI agents is at only 36%.
The “deploy first, govern later” approach — already documented in NZ government agencies — is now confirmed across the private sector too. The gap between adoption and governance is measurable and widening.
Why it matters: Every data point we collect on NZ AI adoption tells the same story: we’re deploying fast and governing slow. The voluntary AI framework published by the government has no binding enforcement. ASB is launching national AI training for SMEs. The AI Blueprint for 2030 is ambitious. But without governance infrastructure, the acceleration creates risk rather than value. We’re building the plane while flying it — and we don’t have a pilot’s license.
6. ASB Launches National AI Programme to Lift NZ Business Productivity
ASB has launched a national programme to help New Zealand SMEs adopt AI, combining training, expert support, and technology access to address the productivity gap.
The bank is targeting thousands of small and medium businesses — the sector that has been slowest to adopt AI in NZ. The programme connects talent, knowledge, and expertise, aiming to lift productivity across the SME sector.
This is not a PR move. ASB is committing real resources. The bank’s investment signals that NZ’s financial sector sees AI adoption as a competitive necessity, not an optional upgrade.
Why it matters: SMEs are the backbone of the NZ economy but they’re also the most vulnerable to AI disruption. They don’t have in-house AI teams. They don’t have data scientists. Programmes like this — from trusted institutions like banks — might be the most effective way to close the AI fluency gap in the NZ economy. The question is whether training alone is enough, or whether structural support (governance, compliance, data preparation) is also required.
🔍 THE BOTTOM LINE
The new job titles (Claude Evangelist! Vibe coder!) make for entertaining reading, but the real story is the structural shift underneath. Salesforce is rewriting roles. Google is hiring deployment armies. SAP’s robots are going live in real warehouses.
In New Zealand, the adoption figures keep climbing while the governance figures stay flat. ASB is stepping into the training gap. The AI Blueprint is ambitious. But we’re still running a voluntary compliance model while the technology accelerates.
The tech industry creates $240K evangelist roles and eliminates $60K analyst roles in the same quarter. The new jobs pay better. But you have to be in the right room to get them. And in NZ, most SMEs aren’t in that room yet.
This is a daily technology & people digest from Singularity.Kiwi. Updates on how AI is reshaping work, society, and everyday life.