Neuronify

Prompt engineering

Designing and testing the instructions and examples given to a language model so it performs a task reliably.

Hiring data as of November 4, 2026 · refreshed daily

companies naming it
12 of 47companies naming it
open roles naming it
17open roles naming it
of those based in NYC
10of those based in NYC
median posted base (n=8)
$180kmedian posted base (n=8)

What Prompt engineering means

Prompt engineering is the practice of writing the instructions, examples, and formatting a model receives so that it does a task consistently. Done seriously it is iterative and measured: a prompt is changed, run against a set of test cases, and kept only if the scores improve.

As a standalone job title it has largely faded — US search interest in “prompt engineering jobs” fell by roughly two-thirds in the year to September 2026 — but as a skill it has spread into nearly every role that touches a model. The adjacent term gaining ground is context engineering, which treats the whole context window, not just the instruction text, as the thing being designed.

Prompt engineering in New York job posts

12 of the 47 New York AI companies we track name Prompt engineering in at least one open role today, across 17 postings. 10 of those are based in New York; the rest are remote or in the companies’ other offices.

Engineering roles make up 53% of the postings that name it, with the rest spread across other functions.

How to read it

Rarely the headline requirement now; more often one line in a list with RAG, tool use, and evals. Outside engineering — operations, accounting, marketing — it signals that the team expects you to build your own model-driven workflows rather than wait for engineering to do it.

What these roles pay

$163k25th percentile
$180kMedian
$218k75th percentile

Midpoints of 8 distinct salary ranges posted on New York roles that name Prompt engineering. Base salary only; on-target earnings are excluded, and a range repeated across one company’s postings counts once. For comparison, the median across all New York engineering postings is $216k. A term’s pay reflects the roles that name it as much as the skill itself — see the role mix below before reading a premium into it. Full bands by function and seniority are in the NYC salary calculator.

Companies naming Prompt engineering, daily

Count of companies with at least one open role naming the term. We read between 46 and 47 companies a day over this period, so a move of one or two is noise.

0102012Sep 20Nov 4Sep 20: 16 companiesSep 21: 16 companiesSep 22: 16 companiesSep 23: 16 companiesSep 24: 15 companiesSep 25: 15 companiesSep 26: 15 companiesSep 27: 15 companiesSep 28: 15 companiesSep 29: 15 companiesSep 30: 15 companiesOct 1: 15 companiesOct 2: 15 companiesOct 3: 15 companiesOct 4: 15 companiesOct 5: 15 companiesOct 6: 15 companiesOct 7: 15 companiesOct 8: 15 companiesOct 9: 14 companiesOct 10: 14 companiesOct 11: 14 companiesOct 12: 14 companiesOct 13: 14 companiesOct 14: 14 companiesOct 15: 14 companiesOct 16: 14 companiesOct 17: 14 companiesOct 18: 14 companiesOct 19: 14 companiesOct 20: 14 companiesOct 21: 14 companiesOct 22: 14 companiesOct 23: 15 companiesOct 24: 15 companiesOct 25: 15 companiesOct 26: 16 companiesOct 27: 15 companiesOct 28: 14 companiesOct 29: 14 companiesOct 30: 14 companiesOct 31: 14 companiesNov 1: 14 companiesNov 2: 14 companiesNov 3: 12 companiesNov 4: 12 companies
View as table
Datecompanies
2026-09-2016
2026-09-2116
2026-09-2216
2026-09-2316
2026-09-2415
2026-09-2515
2026-09-2615
2026-09-2715
2026-09-2815
2026-09-2915
2026-09-3015
2026-10-0115
2026-10-0215
2026-10-0315
2026-10-0415
2026-10-0515
2026-10-0615
2026-10-0715
2026-10-0815
2026-10-0914
2026-10-1014
2026-10-1114
2026-10-1214
2026-10-1314
2026-10-1414
2026-10-1514
2026-10-1614
2026-10-1714
2026-10-1814
2026-10-1914
2026-10-2014
2026-10-2114
2026-10-2214
2026-10-2315
2026-10-2415
2026-10-2515
2026-10-2616
2026-10-2715
2026-10-2814
2026-10-2914
2026-10-3014
2026-10-3114
2026-11-0114
2026-11-0214
2026-11-0312
2026-11-0412

Who names it

Open roles naming Prompt engineering, by company.

  • AlphaSense4
  • EvolutionIQ2
  • Runway2
  • Anterior1
  • April1
  • Basis1
  • Clay1
  • Comet1
  • Hebbia1
  • K Health1
  • Patlytics1
  • Sixfold1

Which roles

The same postings, by function and by seniority.

  • Engineering9
  • Product4
  • Operations1
  • Finance & Legal1
  • GTM1
  • Design1
  • Staff/Principal6
  • Mid6
  • Senior4
  • Manager1

Named alongside Prompt engineering

Terms that appear in the same postings far more often than chance would put them there. The number is how many of the 12 companies pair the two.

Open roles naming Prompt engineering

A sample from today’s data, New York roles first and one per company before any repeats. Links go to the employer’s own posting. For the full market, see AI jobs in NYC.

How this is counted

Every day we read the open roles on the public job boards of the New York AI companies in our coverage — the NYC AI 100 and the AI in NYC Show roster. This term is matched against each role’s description after removing the text a company repeats across its postings, so an “About us” paragraph cannot tag every role the company has open. A vendor’s own postings never count toward its own name.

The figure means named in a job posting. It does not mean used in production, and a “nice to have” counts the same as a requirement. Companies are the headline number because posting counts are dominated by whichever few employers are hiring hardest this month.

Full method, including the pay rules, is on the glossary index; the underlying series is the NYC AI Hiring Index.

Prompt engineering — common questions

What does Prompt engineering mean in an AI job posting?

Designing and testing the instructions and examples given to a language model so it performs a task reliably. Rarely the headline requirement now; more often one line in a list with RAG, tool use, and evals. Outside engineering — operations, accounting, marketing — it signals that the team expects you to build your own model-driven workflows rather than wait for engineering to do it.

How many New York AI companies are hiring for Prompt engineering?

As of November 4, 2026, 12 of the 47 New York AI companies we track name Prompt engineering in the description of at least one open role, across 17 postings (10 based in New York). The count refreshes daily from the companies’ own job boards.

What do roles that ask for Prompt engineering pay in New York?

Across 8 distinct posted salary ranges on New York roles naming Prompt engineering, the median midpoint is $180k base, with the middle half between $163k and $218k. The same figure for all New York engineering postings is $216k. These are employer-posted ranges required by New York’s pay transparency law, base salary only.

Which skills are asked for alongside Prompt engineering?

In the same postings, the terms most distinctively paired with Prompt engineering are Vector search, RAG, Tool use, AI safety, Evals. We rank pairings by how much more often they appear together than apart, so near-universal terms such as Python do not crowd out the informative ones.

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