AI orchestrators are the newest in-demand AI role

Step aside, there’s a new hot AI job in town.

Companies are seeking AI orchestrators who can ensure their agents are working nicely with one another.

An AI orchestrator, you say? Armando Franco, senior director of cloud and platform modernization at TEKsystems Global Services, described the AI orchestrator role as the human in the loop who helps coordinate work between agents.

“Basically, they are the people that get AI processes handed off to them and work toward ensuring that…agents themselves, once they are released into production, are working collaboratively [and] that they are working within their boundaries,” Franco said.

“If an agent goes out and gets a bunch of data, and then takes a decision to say, ‘I’m going to do X with this data,’ an AI orchestrator will generally review that to ensure that the decision is ready to be handed off to the next agent to create a little bit more security around the process and the data to ensure that the governance is in place and to ensure that the agents are acting correctly,” he added.

Popular! Demand for these professionals has skyrocketed in the past year. According to Lightcast data provided to IT Brew, there were 739 AI orchestrator job listings in February 2026, a 1,294% increase from the year prior. Franco said the role is garnering interest from companies because they understand the risk that comes with agents unsupervised by humans.

“It is a mandatory role, and more and more organizations are realizing that these roles need to be in place for AI to operate securely, safely, and at scale,” Franco said.

Skill bill. IT pros interested in an AI orchestrator role should have an affinity for staying up-to-date with new technology, said cybersecurity company Arkose Labs CEO and founder Kevin Gosschalk.

“When we’re looking for people in roles like this, it’s really who has a passion, and you can kind of tell,” Gosschalk said. “You can kind of glean the people that are excited to learn it and [are] passionate for it, and they’re the kind of people that should be in roles like this because they’re the ones that are going to be the champions to drive that change within the organizations, as well.”

Franco added interested professionals should be subject-matter experts in business processes, while also having good technical skills.

“You will need to know the business in and out to understand if the agent is actually behaving in its path,” Franco said. “But you also have to understand the technology well enough to say, ‘Oh, there’s this agent that went into this database.’”

Here for a good time or a long time? The industry remains divided on whether or not humans will remain in the loop indefinitely. Nonetheless, Franco believes the AI orchestrator role will remain a permanent gig for IT pros because agents, similar to junior employees, will continue to need supervision.

“That’s still going to remain the case,” Franco said. “You can’t offload all that into AI and say AI is smart enough to take over. You can offload a lot of the manual processes, but in the end, there still has to be checks and balances to ensure that the changes going into production aren’t going to cause you a major failure or major outage.”

Others aren’t so sure about the role’s longevity, however. While managing agents remains a much-needed job now, Gosschalk said, the industry is changing rapidly.

“As far as we can see, [managing agents] is likely to be something for the next 18 months. That’s a problem that’s going to exist,” Gosschalk said. “But is there going to be a system that sits on top of them and does what this role currently is designed to do within 18 months? I wouldn’t be shocked if AI can do that, as well.”