CXL’s Q3 analysis looked at 878 US marketing job ads, and 40% of them required AI as a skill or responsibility, up from 15% in Q1. Asks for AI search, AEO or GEO work went from 6% to 15% over the same period, more than double in two quarters.
These are US numbers, so we’d read them as a direction of travel for Australian briefs.
Growth roles are moving first
In Q3, 54% of growth roles and 56% of CRO and experimentation roles required AI. Growth director roles hit 60%, while generalist marketing director roles stayed fairly flat. CXL calls it a function story more than a seniority one.
Automation is part of the picture too. It turned up in 35% of ads in Q3, up from 18% in Q1, and tools like Claude Code, Cursor, n8n and Clay are starting to appear in job ads.
Dedicated GEO roles are still rare
This is the part worth pausing on. In Navii’s 30-day snapshot, dedicated GEO and AEO specialist roles made up only 153 postings worldwide, and 94% were senior. So for most teams, AI search work seems to be sitting inside existing SEO, content and growth roles, which is usually where it fits best.
What we’d look at first
If you’re briefing a marketing hire this month, here’s where we’d start.
- AI search in the brief you already have. It’s worth checking whether your SEO or content role should own it before creating a new one.
- A workflow they’ve built. Asking candidates to walk you through something they’ve automated, and what it changed, tells you more than a list of tools.
- How they’d measure it. Hearing how they’d track where your brand shows up in AI answers, and what they’d report back, shows whether they’ve done the work.
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