Draup has released a white paper on how artificial intelligence has changed what employers pay for across six knowledge-work functions: Data Analysis, Software Engineering, Product Management, Financial Analysis, HR Business Partnering and Supply Chain Analysis. The company said the analysis draws on millions of professional profiles and hundreds of thousands of active job postings as of July 2026, and finds that AI has taken over the mechanical work in each role while pay has shifted toward the people who can judge whether the output is right.
Across all six roles, the top 10% of earners make 2.0 to 2.3 times the bottom 10%, according to the report. Pay stays flat through the early years and then climbs sharply in mid-career, which the report attributes to the judgment and domain depth professionals accumulate and that more SQL, Java or Excel will not supply.
The report counts SQL in 316,011 Data Analyst profiles and Java in 1.8 million Software Engineer profiles, and says employers now treat both as entry requirements. It finds 21 Data Analysts who can query data for every one who can tell a story with it, and puts execution skills ahead of resilience skills among Supply Chain Analysts by 294 to 1. Draup's Talent Hiring Difficulty Index sits between 4.7 and 5.9 on a 10-point scale for all six roles, which the report reads as candidates being easy to find and the ones who can do the part AI cannot getting harder to find.
Data Storytelling, Business Partnering, Courageous Conversations, Secure Coding and Supply Chain Resilience are named as emerging skills, growing faster in job-description demand than they appear in candidate profiles. MySQL, SSIS, SSRS, QlikView and routine ETL are named as declining, described as the tasks AI now handles.
Vijay Swaminathan, co-founder and chief executive of Draup, said the execution premium is shifting from technical skills alone toward the ability to work with people and solve broader business problems, and that storytelling can now carry more value than coding for a business analyst. The report finds no evidence that AI is reducing demand: Data Analyst postings ran at 19,000 to 27,000 a month over the past year, and the report records no decline in the other five roles. The Execution Premium covers each function role by role and closes with guidance for hiring managers, learning and development teams and professionals.
