‘20% of all product manager jobs are…’: Expert says jobs in AI need a ‘completely different technical vocabulary’

Whether artificial intelligence will cut jobs or will it help in generating more opportunities is still up for debate, but one most experts at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 agreed on is that it will definitely change the job landscape. For instance, around 20 per cent of all product manager jobs advertised on LinkedIn are now AI product manager roles, as highlighted by Akash Gupta, who makes a living writing about product management. 

“20% of all open PM jobs on LinkedIn right now are AI PM roles. That’s roughly 10,000 out of 50,000 listings. And the trajectory is obvious: FedEx, UPS, Target are cutting PMs. OpenAI, Meta AI, and Amazon Bedrock are hiring them,” said Gupta in a social media post. 

He said the point is not only that these are all jobs at artificial intelligence companies, but also that they require an entirely different technical vocabulary – context engineering, orchestration, observability, evals. 

Gupta gave the example of Shopify that puts AI usage into performance reviews. “eams must prove AI can’t do the job before requesting headcount,” he said, adding that Shopify cut its workforce by a third since 2022 and selectively investing in AI engineers at higher compensation. 

“This is the pattern across the industry. Companies aren’t asking “should we use AI?” They’re asking “why aren’t you using AI already?” And they’re measuring it,” said Gupta, adding that the aforementioned 20 per cent figure will only rise to 60 per cent. 

And the key lesson: The learning curve is not getting any easier. 

AI AND JOBS

A panel called  ‘Future of Employability and AI’ at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 focussed on just that – the changing landscape of work with AI. Vineet Nayar, founder Chairman and CEO of Sampark Foundation & former CEO of HCL Technologies, speaking at the panel said, “From an employment point of view I think it is very important for us to understand that Indian companies, including Indian IT companies, are going to be profit-driven and therefore if you believe that they are going to create employment you must be dreaming.” Nayar said mass scale startups could help in this regard.
 
InfoEdge founder and Executive Vice Chairman Sanjeev Bikhchandani said AI is being used to increase productivity. He advised young professionals to upskill with 5-15 useful AI tools to ensure that they do not lose their jobs to AI. 

In a separate session, Puneet Chandok, President of Microsoft India and South Asia said AI will not kill jobs but “unbundle” them. “AI will not kill jobs, AI will unbundle jobs. Your job is a bundle of tasks. My job is a bundle of tasks. What AI will do is it’ll unbundle it. It’ll break it. All the transactional stuff that you do, stuff that feels like work. I sent 50 emails, and I updated three trackers, and I attended seven meetings. Feels like work. It’s not really work. AI will take that away,” said Chandok, adding that upskilling is the only way out.