The projects requesting artificial intelligence profiles in Spain have grown by over 103% in the last year. The most sought-after profile, the AI builder, develops solutions using existing models.
According to rrhhdigital.com, the projects requesting artificial intelligence profiles in Spain have doubled in the last year, with growth exceeding 103%. The data comes from Shakers, a European community of certified experts in AI, engineering, data, and product.
Behind this demand is the AI builder, a profile that the market has yet to clearly define. These are professionals who create solutions based on existing AI models, without training them from scratch, and who orchestrate models and agents, integrate them with the company's systems, evaluate their results, and put them into production.
According to the State of European AI Builders 2026 study conducted by Shakers, 46% of technology professionals in Spain and Portugal put most or all of their projects into production, surpassing markets like the British.
The most in-demand profiles on Shakers are AI Solutions Architect, accounting for 36% of the demand, Forward Deployed Engineer, with 32%, and AI/LLM Developer, with 14%. The demand for Forward Deployed Engineer has tripled in the last year. Alongside these roles, others that did not exist in the market a year ago have emerged, such as AI Reliability Engineer, AI Agent Developer, AI Architect, or Context Engineer.
Companies pay an average of 49% more per project when hiring purely AI profiles compared to traditional profiles.
Shakers' analysis of 28,748 active technology job offers in Spain shows that tools for building solutions on existing models appear in more offers than those aimed at training proprietary models. LangChain appears in 762 offers and PyTorch in 641.
Across Europe, 53% of AI and machine learning specialists keep their projects running 90 days after launch, compared to 37% of software engineers. Additionally, 32% of European technology professionals spend most of their time directing and reviewing AI work, and another 17% on architecture and problem definition. 73% maintain at least one active AI agent or flow.
Héctor Mata, co-founder and CEO of Shakers, explains the difference between the two profiles:
“Using AI is something almost everyone does now. What distinguishes an AI builder is that they are accountable for what the AI does when it moves from demo to the daily operations of a company. That’s why their projects reach production while others remain in testing.”
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