AI agent developer jobs remain elusive despite explosive market growth

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Career Advice

A recent Reddit discussion on r/aiagents, posted October 23, 2025 by user velvetgusher9797, questioned why “AI Agent developer” has failed to emerge as a recognizable job title despite the technology’s rapid advancement. The thread attracted responses from machine learning engineers, automation developers, and forward deployed engineers who revealed that 70-80% of AI agent work involves integration and infrastructure rather than agent logic itself. This fundamental characteristic has distributed the work across existing engineering disciplines rather than creating a new specialty.

The timing of this discussion coincides with significant platform releases that paradoxically make the question more urgent. Google launched its Agent Development Kit on October 15, 2025, while Amazon released Bedrock AgentCore to general availability in October 2025. Both platforms aim to abstract away programming complexity. According to a McKinsey report published in 2025, AI agent investment reached $1.1 billion in 2024 with job postings increasing 985% between 2023 and 2024, yet the Reddit discussion suggests this growth has not translated into role clarity.

Cloud platforms eliminate traditional programming layers

The Reddit discussion centered on responses from ML engineers about how major cloud providers are fundamentally changing agent development. Dry-Departure-7604, who identified as an ML engineer in the thread, explained that platforms like Google ADK and AWS Agents are removing traditional programming layers. Google’s ADK provides 100+ pre-built connectors for enterprise systems with sequential, parallel, and loop orchestration plus LLM-driven routing. AWS’s AgentCore works with any framework including CrewAI, LangGraph, LlamaIndex, Google ADK, and OpenAI SDK, offering seven core services: Runtime with 8-hour async capabilities, Memory, Identity, Gateway, Browser, Code Interpreter, and Observability.

This platform maturity presents a paradox. The more sophisticated these tools become, the less they require specialized “agent developers.” Early adopters of AWS AgentCore include Sony, Box, Cox Automotive, and Experian, according to Amazon’s October 2025 announcement. These enterprise deployments rely on existing platform engineers and solutions architects rather than creating new roles. PPC Land has tracked this transformation extensively, covering Adobe’s release of AI agents for B2B workflows in October 2025 and LiveRamp’s agentic orchestration platform in October 2025.

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