Hedge funds' new hiring problem: too many AI people, not enough of everyone else
Hedge funds have been aggressively hiring artificial intelligence specialists from firms like Google DeepMind as they build out tools for their traders to use. Now, however, they have a problem; while their demand for AI talent wanes, their applicants have lost interest in everything else.
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In his Q1 market report, Peter Wagner, an MD at New York-based recruitment firm Affinity North, said "it’s actually getting harder and harder to find good junior/mid-level software engineers to work on non-AI related" projects. It's especially hard to find non-AI engineers for graduate roles: "Just about every newly minted computer science grad has concentrated in ML/AI" said Wagner.
Experienced candidates have decided they're all about AI too. One headhunter, speaking anonymously, told us that "lots of engineering folks in Big Tech who would have moved over to engineering positions in trading have pivoted over to AI." At all levels, he says this has lowered supply for hedge fund core engineering roles: "it's not too much of an issue yet, but it's visible in the market."
At the same time, AI hiring is picking up elsewhere. Andy Legg, director of recruitment firm Riviera Partners, told us previously private equity and healthcare are where most of the AI opportunities are now.
Wagner says applying to non-AI roles right now could be "more fruitful" than following the crowd. That being said, you shouldn't ignore AI entirely; Wagner said that AI will "drive demand for a new class of software engineering skills" including prompt engineering and retrieval augmented generation (RAG).
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