Stanford professor says ‘every company should be hiring’ for rare new AI role, and ‘every new grad’ should be looking for it.

0 0 3 minutes read

Stanford professor says ‘every company should be hiring’ for rare new AI role, and ‘every new grad’ should be looking for it.

Artificial intelligence has become one of the biggest sources of concern for workers entering the job market.

According to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 (1), 41% of employers plan to reduce staff by 2030 as AI automates certain tasks. Meanwhile, business firm SignalFire reported that (2) Big Tech companies hired fewer graduates in 2024 than before the pandemic, suggesting entry opportunities may be shrinking.

You Must Read

However, not everyone sees AI as a threat.

Jiaona Zhang, chief product officer at AI timekeeping company Laurel and adjunct professor at Stanford University, believes that AI is creating a completely new job that could be one of the most important jobs for young professionals. He calls it the role of “AI workflows”.

“I think all companies should be aware of this,” Zhang told Business Insider (3). “That’s a role I can push for with every new grad I come in.”

What is the role of “AI workflows”?

According to Zhang, the role involves finding areas within the company that can be improved with AI, and then building or implementing programs that make those improvements a reality.

That could mean helping the sales team automate cold emails, setting up AI agents to handle demo calls or creating internal tools that save staff hours of administrative work.

“If you can start proving to everyone in the world that you’ve saved a group of people for such a long time and created this kind of leverage, that’s a way to shout out your value to all the employers out there,” Zhang told Business Insider.

At Laurel, Zhang said a recent graduate student hired for this position is an AI agent who works as a chief of staff for retailers. The employee became a “very popular person” at the company, he said, and Laurel has grown his AI Ops team.

The idea is already coming from somewhere else. Box recently advertised for an “AI business automation engineer” role with a salary range of $146,500 to $183,000. CEO Aaron Levie described it (4) as a forward-looking engineer for internal business operations and said he expects more companies to have versions of the forward-looking role.

Box did not respond to Moneywise’s request for comment on putting AI into the workforce.

Read More: About 1 in 5 Americans over 50 aren’t saving for retirement – here’s a catch-all strategy you can use.

Is this really the next great entry-level job?

Zhang believes that AI workflows may become a common entry point for new graduates, but the role is still nascent.

A search of the major job boards shows several openings using that specific title. However, many companies hire for similar positions under titles such as AI automation engineer, AI operations specialist, AI transformation analyst and AI enablement manager.

And while companies are pouring money into artificial intelligence, many are still struggling to figure out how to use it effectively. McKinsey’s recent State of AI survey (5) found that organizations are increasingly using AI productivity tools, yet many are still working to capture measurable business value from them.

Given this, employers are likely to look for candidates who can demonstrate practical experience using AI tools to solve business problems. That could mean learning platforms like ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, Zapier or Salesforce’s AI tools, and using them to automate real-world tasks.

In other words, the position may be less about embracing artificial intelligence itself and proving that it can save people time and money. Successful employers may not be those who compete with AI systems, but those who help employers figure out how to use them.