Entry-level jobs at European tech companies are being slashed as demand for AI surges, according to a new report from salary benchmarking platform Ravio.
There was a 73.4% drop in hiring rates for entry-level roles from 2024 to early 2025, compared to a 7.4% decrease in hiring rates across all job levels.
This sharp decline coincides with the growing use of AI agents, which act autonomously to complete a wide range of tasks without human intervention. The use of such tools have been championed by leaders such as buy now, pay later giant Klarna’s CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski and language learning app Duolingo’s CEO Luis von Ahn — both of whom have since dialled back their ambitions.
Ravio’s data also showed job titles with “AI” in their title have grown by 578%, up from 0.32% (2024) to 2.17% (2025). Startups are embedding AI into their products and operations — and there’s growing demand for talent that can build or manage those systems.
Who do employers want — and not want — to hire?
The drop in entry-level hiring has hit engineers hard; hiring rates for entry-level engineers have dropped 72.2% over the last year. Early-career talent looking for roles in marketing, people and product have also faced significantly reduced roles.
It’s a trend mirrored across support functions, with administration roles seeing a 35.5% drop in hiring. Ravio also found that half of survey respondents said they were deprioritising recruitment in administrative roles due to AI-driven automation.
This shift aligns with what employers say they’re looking for instead. Leaders surveyed by Ravio said ‘AI/Machine Learning expertise’ now ranks as the top priority skill their companies are looking to recruit. The demand is especially strong among larger organisations: every respondent from companies with more than 1,000 employees listed AI as a top hiring priority for 2025.
Titles like ‘AI Engineer’, ‘AI Researcher’ and ‘AI Programmer’ are among the most common AI job titles in 2025 — and they come with a pay rise. Software engineers with AI in their job title earn a median salary that is 9.5% higher than those in non-AI software roles.
What are companies doing?
As AI is beginning to replace roles that have historically served as entry points for early-career talent in tech, companies are training existing team members in the emerging technology — implying growth in AI-specialist roles is higher than the data suggests.
Of the companies surveyed 62% said they are training non-technical employees in AI, while 59% said they are training technical employees.
Only 12% of surveyed companies said they were ‘not currently focused on AI skills.’
Ravio’s data is based on an analysis of 350k+ employees at more than 1,400 companies across European countries, alongside a survey of company leaders to contextualise the trends.
