The Serbian technology labour market is sending a clear signal: artificial intelligence is no longer a niche capability but a fast-emerging core skillset, increasingly insulated from the cyclical slowdown affecting the wider IT sector.
Data from HelloWorld.rs show that demand for AI professionals more than doubled in practical terms over the past year, with job postings rising from 192 positions in 2024 to 347 in 2025, representing growth of over 80% year-on-year.
This surge stands in stark contrast to the broader IT labour market, which contracted by approximately 16% in total job listings during 2025. The divergence highlights a structural shift: while traditional software roles are stabilising after a post-pandemic hiring boom, AI-related positions are expanding rapidly from a still modest base.
The absolute numbers remain relatively small, but the growth trajectory is decisive. Serbia is following the global pattern, where AI roles rank among the fastest-growing employment categories and command salary growth rates significantly above the industry average.
The composition of demand is also evolving. While the IT sector continues to dominate hiring, the most notable change is the entry of non-technology industries. Financial services and insurance companies have doubled their demand for AI talent, while telecommunications firms have recorded multiple-fold increases in job postings.
At the same time, domestic companies are beginning to embed AI across operational functions, including human resources, data analytics, and e-commerce. This signals a gradual shift from experimental adoption toward production-level deployment, with implications for both hiring profiles and capital allocation in digital transformation strategies.
The most sought-after roles reflect this transition. Positions such as AI Engineer, Machine Learning Engineer, and software developers with embedded AI capabilities now dominate listings—roles that were largely absent from the Serbian market just a year earlier.
From a skills perspective, Python remains the foundational language, while demand is expanding toward data analytics, business intelligence, and cloud-based deployment capabilities. Employers increasingly expect candidates not only to develop models but also to operationalise them within scalable production environments, linking AI development with cloud infrastructure and DevOps practices.
Taken together, the data points to a bifurcation of the Serbian tech labour market. On one side, conventional IT hiring is normalising amid tighter budgets and global tech recalibration. On the other, AI talent is becoming a strategic priority, driven by cross-sector digitalisation and the need to integrate automation, predictive analytics, and generative models into core business processes.
The implication is less about short-term hiring volatility and more about long-term structural repositioning. AI is transitioning from an experimental capability to a foundational layer of enterprise technology stacks, with Serbia gradually aligning to that global shift—albeit at a smaller scale and with a lag typical of emerging tech markets.
