Top-paying AI jobs in South Africa

Artificial intelligence roles are beginning to pop up more frequently on South African job listing sites, with salaries ranging between R168,000 and R2 million per annum.

This is primarily due to the increased usage of artificial intelligence in the South African economy, either as a service offering or to streamline business systems and processes.

South African jobs website Pnet recently released its Job Market Trends report, revealing that the number of AI professionals securing jobs has nearly doubled since the beginning of 2020.

Most of this hiring has been done by Information Technology companies, followed by the education, finance, and consulting sectors.

To find out what these AI professionals can expect to earn working in South Africa, MyBroadband analysed various job listings across three job websites.

The roles found with the highest remuneration were machine learning engineers who can earn up to R2 million per year based on experience and qualifications.

Most listings describe the core role of a machine learning engineer as supporting data engineers and scientists by developing architecture for cloud and internal usage.

The responsibilities of the typical machine learning engineer include developing and launching AI-driven tools and building scalable machine learning models using cloud platforms.

Most job listings also require candidates to collaborate with data engineers to process and clean large datasets for the training of AI models and integrate them into a business’ existing systems.

The training requirements for candidates to apply to these roles include obtaining a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in computer science, data science, machine learning, or engineering.

This is not consistent across all job postings, as some businesses may require a specific qualification. However, computer and data science degrees are most common.

Candidates applying for a senior machine learning engineer position require at least five years of experience in machine learning, deep learning, or statistical modelling, depending on the company.

Applicants must also be proficient in languages like Python, have a cloud provider certification, and have experience working with the Tensorflow software library.

AI roles requiring less experience

Several other AI-related roles are currently being advertised to people living in South Africa, including prompt engineers, AI trainers, and AI content creators.

These do not have the extensive experience requirements as machine learning engineers and are frequently advertised by international firms looking for South African recruits.

This means remuneration is in a foreign currency, like the dollar, and candidates must work from home. However, a whole 40-hour working week is not always guaranteed.

For instance, one AI prompt engineer position listing in Cape Town notes that its most successful candidates work for between five and twenty hours per week, earning $40 (R753) per hour.

AI prompt engineers craft and optimise prompts to guide models in producing specific outputs.

For this position, candidates should be proficient in at least one programming language, such as JavaScript or Python, have “excellent” writing and grammar skills, and have a bachelor’s degree.

Successful candidates will be expected to work with chatbots that the company is developing to measure their progress and write and evaluate code.

Other job titles frequently listed in South Africa include AI developers, who have very similar requirements to machine learning engineers, and AI content creators.

AI content creator positions do not have the training or technical requirements of the machine learning or prompt engineers, such as proficiency in a programming language or a computer science degree.

Instead, they require experience working with AI models such as ChatGPT and Claude.

However, remuneration is significantly less than that of AI engineering roles.

For instance, one position that requires recruits to generate SEO-friendly blog posts using ChatGPT pays R700 per day, or R14,000 for a 20-day month.