New York AI hiring fell 6%. In New York, it rose.
1,468 open roles, down 6.3% like-for-like. Two companies account for more than all of it, nearly every lost role was outside the city, and three weeks of cohorts now agree on how fast roles come down.
Open roles
1,468
across 47 companies
Like-for-like change
−6.3%
47 companies, since Sep 20
In the city vs elsewhere
+9 / −108
open roles, same 47 companies
Down within 28 days
23–31%
three weekly cohorts
Issue two promised Mondays. This is a Wednesday, a week and a half late, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. The boards have been read every morning regardless, so nothing is missing from the numbers below.
1,468 open roles
Across 47 New York AI companies. 768 of those sit in the city itself and 264 are remote-eligible.
Comparing the same 47 companies with the figures in issue two, open roles went from 1,567 to 1,468. Down 99 in seventeen days, or 6.3%. No company entered or left our coverage, so the raw and like-for-like numbers agree.
That sounds like a pullback. It is narrower than that. 17 companies grew, 17 shrank and 13 did not move. The median company changed by two roles.
The finding: the drop happened outside New York
Last issue asked whether the growth in the city would hold. Split the same 47 companies by where the job is.
Roles based in New York: 759 to 768. Up 9. Roles anywhere else: 808 to 700. Down 108.
The headline fell by 99 roles, and the city gained. Almost everything lost was a job somewhere else.
Two companies explain it. ElevenLabs went from 235 open roles to 139, and only three of the 96 were in New York. AlphaSense went from 221 to 194, six of them here. Take those two out and the other 45 companies grew, from 1,111 roles to 1,135, with 18 of the 24 new roles in the city.
So the pattern from issue two held through a falling month: the companies adding roles are adding them where their New York offices are, and the shrinking is happening on the large, mostly remote boards.
Two big boards, two different stories
The two declines look alike in the totals and are not alike underneath.
ElevenLabs is drawing its board down. 142 of its postings came down in the period and 46 new ones went up. The fall came in steps over two weeks, including a net fall of 25 in a single day on October 6, not one overnight purge that might be a technical change to the board. It is still hiring at the top: a Head of Revenue Operations posting appeared on October 1.
AlphaSense is mostly turning over. 96 postings came down and 69 went up. The net change of 27 is what is left of a lot of motion in both directions.
A posting coming down is not a layoff and not a hire. It can mean filled, cancelled or reposted under a new link, and the data cannot tell those apart. What it does say is that the largest remote boards in our set got smaller while the local ones grew.
Who is hiring hardest
| Company | Open roles | In New York | Change since Sep 20 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ElevenLabs | 139 | 7 | −96 |
| AlphaSense | 194 | 32 | −27 |
| Ramp | 160 | 124 | +12 |
| EliseAI | 124 | 104 | +9 |
| Rogo | 86 | 54 | +3 |
| Headway | 85 | 29 | −2 |
| Clay | 57 | 41 | −3 |
Ramp added 12 roles, ten of them in the city, and EliseAI added nine, five of them here. That is the second issue in a row in which both grew and most of their growth was local. Further down, Modal went from 34 roles to 40 and Runway from 40 to 45.
Every open role at these companies is on the live jobs board, refreshed daily.
The go-to-market lead narrowed
494 open go-to-market roles against 451 in engineering. In issue two it was 552 against 478, so the lead fell from 74 roles to 43.
Both functions shrank, and go-to-market shrank more: 58 roles against 27. Go-to-market is still the bigger function at these companies. The engineering title that sits on that boundary, forward deployed engineer, slipped from 45 open roles to 42 and is still the largest of the new AI titles by a wide margin.
The whole fall was mid-level
| Level | Now | Issue two |
|---|---|---|
| Mid | 734 | 832 |
| Senior | 311 | 324 |
| Staff and principal | 174 | 174 |
| Manager | 91 | 93 |
| Director | 58 | 52 |
| Leadership | 40 | 43 |
| Entry | 60 | 49 |
Mid-level roles fell by 98, nearly the entire decline. Staff and principal did not move at all, and directors rose by six.
The small good news is at the bottom. Entry-level roles went from 49 to 60, after touching 63 last week. Staff and principal roles still outnumber them almost three to one, down from three and a half, so the routes in are still mostly lateral ones; they are in how to get into AI.
What it pays
From salary ranges posted on New York listings. 92% of NYC postings carry one, the same as last issue.
| Function | 25th | Median | 75th |
|---|---|---|---|
| Engineering | $185,000 | $215,000 | $253,500 |
| Product | $157,500 | $200,000 | $245,000 |
| Finance & Legal | $148,000 | $185,000 | $210,000 |
| Go-to-market | $133,000 | $161,000 | $205,000 |
| Operations | $130,000 | $160,000 | $180,000 |
Engineering holds at a $215,000 median, exactly where it was in issue two, on 158 posted ranges. Staff and principal engineers post $250,000 and senior engineers $205,000.
Product rose from $188,000 to $200,000, and we would not read a raise into it: 29 ranges, over whichever roles happen to be open. Engineering, with the most data, is the number to watch, and it has not moved. The NYC AI engineer salary guide has the bands by level.
What they are building with
Tools named in job descriptions, counted by how many of the 47 companies mention each:
| Tool | Companies | Issue two |
|---|---|---|
| TypeScript | 40 | 39 |
| Python | 40 | 42 |
| AWS | 37 | 39 |
| SQL | 33 | 31 |
| Kubernetes | 28 | 27 |
| Anthropic | 24 | 24 |
| OpenAI | 17 | 20 |
Anthropic held at 24 companies while OpenAI fell from 20 to 17, so the gap that closed to four last issue has opened to seven. Both counts now use the corrected method described in issue two, so this comparison is like-for-like. The data warehouse stack edged up: dbt went from 17 companies to 19 and SQL from 31 to 33. Every term, with who is asking for it, is in the AI skills glossary.
New this issue: the top of the org chart
We now track every open C-level, VP and head-of search at these companies. 28 are open. Three opened since issue two and six came down.
The openings worth noting: ASAPP posted a Chief Product Officer search on September 22, and six days later its Chief Marketing Officer posting came down after 34 days open. ElevenLabs opened its Head of Revenue Operations search in the middle of its drawdown. Runway's Chief of Staff to the Co-CEO came down after 45 days.
The same caution applies with more force here: a search coming down does not tell you who, if anyone, was hired. Confirmed leadership moves go in the NYC AI moves tracker once they are announced.
Time to fill: three cohorts agree
Last issue had one cohort. There are now three weeks of roles old enough to read.
For each week, we take every role that first appeared at a company we were already tracking, and ask what share came down within 28 days:
| Roles first seen | Roles | Down within 14 days | Down within 28 days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 16–22 | 115 | 13% | 25% |
| Aug 23–29 | 126 | 15% | 23% |
| Aug 30–Sep 5 | 108 | 13% | 31% |
Between a quarter and a third of AI roles posted in New York come down within four weeks. The two-week figure has barely moved, at 13–15%. The third cohort is the fastest, and its four weeks overlap the ElevenLabs drawdown the most, so we would not call it a trend yet.
The base rate is the useful part. If you are told a role is about to close, roughly seven in ten are still open a month after they were posted. "Came down" still means the posting disappeared, which covers filled, cancelled and reposted, and we cannot tell those apart.
Next issue: Monday, October 12. Whether the two large boards keep shrinking, and a fourth cohort.
A note on method
Week-over-week changes are computed on the companies present in both weeks, never on the headline total. Adding a company to our coverage adds its whole board to the count and would show up as a hiring surge that never happened. We would rather report a flat 0.4% than an exciting 2.9% that is really a bookkeeping change.
Read each morning from the job boards of 48 New York AI companies. Every company name links to their own application page — never ours. Full methodology and coverage on the index page.