Hiring came back. Most of it was outside New York.
1,552 open roles, up 6.1% like-for-like. ElevenLabs and AlphaSense both grew again, but only 15 of the 89 new roles are in the city, and director searches hit a new high.
Open roles
1,552
across 47 companies
Like-for-like change
+6.1%
46 companies, since Oct 11
Roles in the city
788
+15 of the 89 new roles
Down within 28 days
23–31%
five weekly cohorts
This issue is a day late, so it covers nine days, October 11 to October 20. Issue four left two questions open: would ElevenLabs keep shrinking, and would AlphaSense's pause hold? Neither did.
1,552 open roles
Across 47 New York AI companies. 788 of those sit in the city itself and 319 are remote-eligible.
Comparing the same 46 companies with issue four, open roles went from 1,462 to 1,551. Up 89, or 6.1%. That is the largest rise between any two issues so far. The company that dropped out of the count last issue has its one opening back, which is the single role between the raw and like-for-like figures.
22 companies grew, 9 shrank and 15 did not move.
The finding: the rebound happened mostly outside the city
For three issues the pattern held: totals fell, but roles in New York rose. This week the total rose, and most of the rise was elsewhere.
| Sep 20 | Oct 11 | Oct 20 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Roles in New York | 759 | 773 | 788 |
| Roles elsewhere | 807 | 689 | 763 |
Of the 89 new roles, 15 are in New York and 74 are not. The city has still gone up at every issue, and peaked at 793 on October 19. But the roles that left the other locations in late September are coming back faster than the city is adding them.
ElevenLabs is hiring again
ElevenLabs went from 125 open roles to 157, up from a low of 122 on October 9. It is still well below the 235 it listed on September 20. The rebuild was steady, not a single batch: new postings went up on every working day of the period. 32 postings also came down, so roughly 64 went up in nine days. The ones that came down had been open a median of 24 days. Its New York roles went from 7 to 11.
AlphaSense went from 196 to 211, its highest since September 24. Fourteen of its new postings went up on a single day, October 16. Its New York roles went from 31 to 35.
Without those two, the other 44 companies went from 1,141 roles to 1,183. That is up 42, and just 7 of the 42 are in New York.
Who is hiring hardest
| Company | Open roles | In New York | Change since Oct 11 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AlphaSense | 211 | 35 | +15 |
| Ramp | 168 | 130 | +3 |
| ElevenLabs | 157 | 11 | +32 |
| EliseAI | 131 | 111 | +4 |
| Rogo | 96 | 58 | +8 |
| Headway | 89 | 24 | +2 |
| Clay | 59 | 41 | +4 |
EliseAI's growth was all local for a fourth issue running: all four of its new roles are in New York. Rogo added eight, three of them in the city, and is now at its highest count. Ramp added three, one in New York.
Every open role at these companies is on the live jobs board, refreshed daily.
Director searches hit a record
| Level | Now | Issue four |
|---|---|---|
| Mid | 787 | 726 |
| Senior | 330 | 309 |
| Staff and principal | 167 | 172 |
| Manager | 100 | 92 |
| Director | 71 | 62 |
| Entry | 60 | 64 |
| Leadership | 37 | 37 |
71 director roles is the most we have recorded, up from 52 on September 20. Entry level gave back the high from last issue, to 60, so staff and principal roles now outnumber entry-level ones 2.8 to one. The routes in are in how to get into AI.
Most of the growth was on the selling side. Go-to-market added 36 roles and engineering added two. Go-to-market now leads 534 to 448, a gap of 86, up from 52. Forward deployed engineer roles went from 40 to 41.
What it pays
From salary ranges posted on New York listings. 91% of NYC postings carry one, down from 92%.
| Function | 25th | Median | 75th |
|---|---|---|---|
| Engineering | $185,000 | $215,000 | $253,500 |
| Product | $175,000 | $197,500 | $227,500 |
| Finance & Legal | $145,000 | $185,000 | $215,000 |
| Go-to-market | $135,000 | $165,000 | $212,500 |
| Operations | $127,500 | $155,000 | $175,000 |
Engineering holds at $215,000 for a fourth issue, on 156 posted ranges. Senior engineers' median is $207,500 and staff and principal is $245,000. The NYC AI engineer salary guide has the bands by level.
The tool counts, again
Last issue's caution in reverse: Anthropic went from 19 companies to 21, and OpenAI went from 14 to 15. As boards grow, more of them carry a posting that names a tool. Python (38 to 40), SQL (31 to 33), Azure (15 to 17) and Rust (9 to 11) also went up by two. That is more postings, not a change in what anyone builds with. Every term, with who is asking for it, is in the AI skills glossary.
The top of the org chart
28 C-level, VP and head-of searches are open, up from 26. Seven opened and five came down.
Two of the openings are Chief of Staff searches at ElevenLabs. One carries the same title as the Enterprise Deployment Chief of Staff role that came down in the last issue after 50 days. It went up on October 20. Ramp opened a Chief Compliance Officer search for Ramp Advisory LLC. Headway opened a clinical Chief of Staff role, and its R&D Chief of Staff search came down after 59 days. Clay is looking for a Head of Field Marketing.
A search coming down still 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: a fifth cohort
The roles first posted in the week of September 13 have now had their 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% |
| Sep 6–12 | 89 | 10% | 29% |
| Sep 13–19 | 118 | 12% | 27% |
Five cohorts, the same answer. Between a quarter and a third of AI roles posted in New York come down within four weeks, and roughly seven in ten are still up a month after posting.
"Came down" means the posting disappeared: filled, cancelled or reposted under a new link, and we cannot tell those apart.
Next issue: Monday, October 26. Whether the rebound holds, whether the city catches up, and a sixth 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.