“We need to bring people in who are incredibly fluent and kind of early adopters of AI tools, and who can develop agents,” said Shannon Moorman, WPP’s global head of talent attraction. “Over time, we want everyone in the company to be fluent in developing agents and conversant in these tools. But we have to start somewhere.”

Lloyds Banking Group, for example, hired Aritra Chakravarty (formerly of HSBC) as its head of agentic AI in June. But this isn’t just a case of adding another manager with a creatively worded job title to the masthead.

Media agencies are hiring “solutions architects” and “frontline engineers”, as well as the comfortingly plain English “AI agent developers”. Whatever the title, it’s not a bad gig. One London-based opening listed by Publicis Media offered $70,000-$110,000 and another, posted by WPP, offered a salary ranging between $75,000 and $180,000.

Both Publicis Groupe and WPP had open job postings for AI engineering roles at the time of writing. WPP is hiring for applied AI roles across its creative and media agency businesses, Moorman said; “WPP is currently witnessing a 50% increase in AI requirements for roles we are actively recruiting versus 2024,” a spokesman later confirmed.

At Monks, co-founder and chief AI officer Wesley ter Haar told Digiday the company had this year filled four to five agentic AI roles each in the U.S., U.K. and Netherlands.

Indie media agencies are hiring for the skill set, too. Go Fish Digital, for example, hired two “solutions architects” in the last year, according to David Dweck, general manager.

“We actually need people who understand [AI], who are building systems organically within their day to day workflows. People who understand taking what took them 40 hours one week and turning it into 38 the next week,” he said. “They’re some of the highest performers, and they just over index towards wanting to learn and being malleable.”

Agent developer roles often call for talent who’ve accumulated experience not just in building and tweaking tech on the fly, but who can coordinate both the practical and technical. They’re expected to be problem solvers and polymaths.

One recent listing for a position with Publicis Media asks for “deep technical expertise with leadership and a passion for AI/LLM-powered solutions,” as well as “deep understanding of scalable, efficient, full-stack cloud systems and expertise in modular, distributed, asynchronous architecture.”

Not all agent developers are equal, however. At Monks, ter Haar said experiments and R&D activity with AI agents was the domain of its “creative technologists”, often a junior role. Putting an agent into practice with a client involves a different skill set, he suggested, and was the purview of “front line deployed engineers” — a phrase borrowed from tech company Palantir, a firm which has popularized military-esque vocabulary in AI and tech circles. While the first role could be the kind occupied by a recent graduate, the second calls for around seven years of experience in marketing and tech, ter Haar suggested.

“You want people that are senior enough to operate within a complex environment, but are modern enough to be, if not native in this race, at least very forward about it, and knowledgeable,” he said. Because agents require installation — to make use of access to a company’s data and internal systems, front-line engineers are needed to complete the “last mile” of AI implementation. “[They go] into a client organization and [do] the practical implementation work on the ground,” he added.

Hiring managers know they must compete with agency peers, Silicon Valley and their own clients to attract. Historically, it’s a contest they’ve often lost. A month ago, for example, Walmart was offering software engineers on an agent-focused development team up to $220,000.

“AI talent’s not going to come to us. We can’t afford them, and it wouldn’t make sense for them,” acknowledged Dweck.

Moorman argued that WPP can offer AI talent the chance to own larger projects, versus making smaller contributions at the bleeding edge. “They’re drawn to us because we’re a creative industry, and they’re intrigued by it,” she added.

In any case, they don’t have much of a choice. As the intuitive face of applied AI, agents have become the focal point of brands’ AI investment. Falling behind in the talent race would signal a lack of AI capabilities to prospective clients, argued one holding company agency exec, who exchanged candor for anonymity.

“Businesses are no longer satisfied with systems that automate processes. They now want systems that can reason, plan, and act,“ they said. “Companies should take a dual approach: enabling existing talent to become AI-proficient while hiring new, AI-native engineers. Internally, give teams the tools for a learning and experimentation environment. Externally, hire people who can think systemically about AI.“

And while some execs are skeptical, agencies and publishers are in the midst of rebuilding their business models and teams around the tech. To do that, they’ll need the right people. “The goal is not to add AI as a layer on top of what organizations already do but to reimagine the blueprint of how we work.“