Entry level AI jobs

Entry level AI jobs are a measured slice of the live catalogue: 188 internship postings and 772 junior postings, 0.0% of the 19,442 live postings where seniority is stated at all. That is the honest denominator; the rest of this page reads it apart by category, degree requirement, Level, and location.

The number this article rests on: 960 internship or junior postings out of 19,442 live postings with a known seniority, 0.0%. Measured September 2026.

A beginner searching this phrase is really asking four separate questions: how many postings will actually consider someone starting out, which parts of the field hire them most, whether a degree gets requested along the way, and where AI shows up as a light, learnable tool rather than the whole job. Each gets its own section below, built from the same live catalogue rather than four repeats of the same headline count.

Seniority itself is read from the words in the posting, not guessed from the title: a listing has to say intern, entry level, junior, or an equivalent phrase to be counted here. 7,487 postings say nothing about seniority at all and are excluded from the share above rather than assumed either way, which is why the denominator is 19,442, not the full 26,929.

How many AI job postings accept a beginner?

960 of 19,442 postings with a stated seniority, 0.0%, are marked internship or junior. Internships alone account for 188, and junior roles for 772, so the two groups are close enough in size that neither one dominates the beginner path on its own. Measured September 2026.

That leaves the majority of postings aimed at more senior hires, which is worth saying plainly rather than around: most live AI-related work is not written for a first job. The categories below narrow that gap by showing where the entry-level share actually concentrates.

That majority is not evidence against trying; it is evidence for being selective about where to look. A beginner who treats every live posting as an equally likely target will spend most of their search reading requirements written for someone with years of experience. The remaining sections narrow the search to where a first job is actually being offered, rather than leaving that work to the applicant.

Which categories hire the most entry-level candidates?

Ranked by the number of internship and junior postings inside each category, among those with at least 100 live jobs: sales (213 entry-level postings), software engineering (150 entry-level postings), operations (90 entry-level postings), research (40 entry-level postings), and customer support (33 entry-level postings). Measured September 2026.

1. Sales: 213 internship or junior postings out of 5,180 live in the category.
2. Software Engineering: 150 internship or junior postings out of 7,783 live in the category.
3. Operations: 90 internship or junior postings out of 1,433 live in the category.
4. Research: 40 internship or junior postings out of 430 live in the category.
5. Customer Support: 33 internship or junior postings out of 651 live in the category.

Two of the categories most worth a direct look for a beginner sit outside engineering entirely: customer support and sales both carry real entry-level counts, evidence that a first AI-adjacent job does not require writing code. The unfiltered ranking, computed the same way across every category regardless of sample size, is software engineering, sales, and other, a useful second cut when a category's live count is too small to reach the 100-job threshold above but still worth naming.

Reading these two rankings together matters more than either alone: a category can carry a large raw count of entry-level postings while still being a small share of its own listings, or the reverse. Neither ranking claims a category is easy to break into, only that it is where the beginner postings are concentrated today.

The practical takeaway is to start a search inside these named categories rather than across the whole catalogue at once. A beginner scanning every live posting indiscriminately competes against every seniority level at once; narrowing to the categories above at least puts the search inside the part of the catalogue where entry-level hiring is demonstrably happening.

Do entry-level AI jobs require a degree?

Often, but not universally. 4,781 of 26,929 live AI-related postings, 17.8%, name a bachelor's, master's, or PhD anywhere in the text. That figure spans every seniority level, not entry-level postings alone, since this catalogue does not cross-tabulate degree mentions against seniority. Measured September 2026.

Read plainly, that means roughly 17.8% of the whole live catalogue asks for a credential and the rest does not, so a beginner without a degree is not ruled out of most of the field on that basis alone. What a specific internship or junior posting asks for still has to be read individually; a catalogue-wide share describes the field, not any one listing's requirement.

Degree mentions and seniority are two separate filters on the same postings, and a beginner should expect to check both on any specific listing rather than assume the site-wide degree share applies evenly to entry-level roles specifically.

Treat the catalogue-wide share as a planning number, not a per-listing guarantee. A beginner deciding whether to apply without a degree is better served reading the specific posting's requirements than extrapolating from a figure that covers postings at every seniority level, from internship through senior leadership, in one average.

Which Level should a beginner target?

Level 1, where AI is a light or occasional part of the job rather than the whole role, is the natural starting point: 17,981 of 26,929 live postings sit at that Level, a substantial share of the catalogue that does not assume deep AI expertise walking in. Measured September 2026.

That does not mean Level 1 is the only option. Some entry-level and internship postings sit at higher Levels, particularly inside software engineering and data categories where a junior title still means working with AI tools directly rather than adjacent to them. Level is a measure of how central AI is to the daily work, not a measure of seniority, so the two should be checked separately on any given posting rather than assumed to move together.

Level 1 is also the broadest on-ramp precisely because it does not require prior AI-specific experience: customer support and sales postings at this Level typically ask for the underlying job skill first, with AI tools layered on top rather than the reverse.

Level and seniority answer different questions, which is why they are kept apart in this catalogue rather than merged into one score. A candidate can be a beginner at Level 1, using AI as an occasional tool inside a familiar job, or a beginner at a higher Level, learning AI tools and the underlying job at the same time. Checking a specific posting's Level alongside its stated seniority gives a clearer read than either figure alone.

Is it possible to start in AI without a technical background?

Yes, measurably. 17,457 of 26,929 live postings, 64.8%, sit outside software engineering, data, research, and security, meaning the daily work does not center on writing code or building models even though the role still touches AI tools directly. Measured September 2026.

Combined with the 49.1% of all live postings marked remote, a beginner without a computer-science background has two separate paths worth checking before ruling AI-adjacent work out: a non-technical category where AI is a tool inside a familiar job, and a remote listing that does not require relocating first. Neither figure is specific to entry-level postings alone, so the honest reading is that the wider catalogue leaves room for both paths, not a guarantee that any single beginner posting offers them together.

The entry-level data jobs question tracks one specific category's beginner postings in more depth than the catalogue-wide figures here can, and is a reasonable next stop for a candidate who has narrowed their search to data-adjacent work specifically.

The jobs right now

Live internship and junior postings, generated from the catalogue and not written by hand, newest first.

Browse every Level 1 posting on the Level 1 page, or start from the customer support and sales categories directly.

Method

• Scope: live postings in the Level catalogue whose text states internship or junior seniority, plus catalogue-wide degree, Level, and remote figures for context since those are not cross-tabulated against seniority.
• Sample: 26,929 live jobs, of which 11,953 publish a salary and 10,606 publish it in USD.
• Measured: September 2026, from the live catalogue at jobsbylevel.com, refreshed every six hours.
• Currency: USD only, no conversions. Medians are on the posted maximum unless stated.
• Not measured: seniority is unknown on 7,487 postings and excluded from the entry-level share; degree and remote figures describe the whole catalogue, not entry-level postings specifically; internal promotion paths are not tracked here.