AI Labs Beat Big Tech for Engineer Jobs, Interns Fall
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- Anthropic is the most in‑demand AI lab, receiving over 50% of interview‑prep requests on interviewing.io and achieving the highest 2‑year employee retention rate at 80%.
- Intern hiring at large U.S. tech firms has fallen to roughly half of 2022 levels, even as overall software engineering hiring recovers.
- New‑grad hires now make up only 10% of engineering hires at major tech companies in 2025, down from about 30% in 2023, with elite‑university graduates increasingly favored.
- Frontend and native mobile roles are disappearing fastest across the industry, while AI engineering and Forward‑Deployed Engineer (FDE) positions are expanding rapidly.
- AI engineers command higher pay, with senior AI engineers at the 80th percentile earning $300 K+ base salaries and larger equity grants than comparable software engineers.
- Engineering management is flattening, with fewer managers per engineer and a reduction in VP and director of engineering roles at Big Tech firms.
Why it matters: AI labs gain a talent advantage, pulling the majority of interview‑prep traffic and retaining 80% of staff for two years, while early‑career engineers face a 90% drop in hiring chances and mobile/frontend specialists see rapid role erosion. The compensation premium for AI engineers reshapes salary benchmarks across tech.
