RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK — Looking at 15 different local or regional job board sites for “startup” jobs in the Triangle, the exclusive WRAL TechWire Jobs Report showed 7,298 openings (not accounting for duplications in postings) this week.

In a TechCrunch article posted Friday, one AI-focused CEO says startups should be looking for one position in particular: a fractional AI officer.

“Having a fractional AI officer is superior to hiring full-time in one crucial respect,” said Raphael Ouzan, the founder and CEO of A.Team, a future-of-work company with an AI-enabled team formation platform. “AI—especially generative AI—is such a new technology that breadth of experience across multiple companies gives fractional executives an edge over their full-time counterparts.”

Fractional Chief AI Officers, or CAIOs, help companies cost-effectively access AI leadership, says Piers Linney in “The Case For Appointing A Fractional Chief AI Officer,” a whitepaper by UK-based Implement AI.

Linney, Implement co-founder, says fractional CAIOs can oversee strategy and initiatives part-time while companies control costs.

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“In this era of rapid digital transformation, organisations that fail to incorporate AI into their strategic planning risk falling behind. In an exponentially developing environment it will be difficult to catch up, writes Linney in the whitepaper. “Organisations that fail to create a dedicated Chief AI Officer (CAIO) position risk missing key opportunities to leverage AI and falling behind competitors who are actively
integrating AI.”

Ouzan writes that executives at every level—not just the enterprise level.

“Startups and scale-ups need to integrate AI just as badly—especially if they’re trying to fundraise in this AI moment,” said Ouzan in the article. “However, they often don’t have the resources or the organizational structure to support a senior executive focused exclusively on AI.”

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Trends for ‘startup’ jobs in the Triangle

Startup job posting numbers (not accounting for duplications in postings) are 64.5% lower than this time last year.

Here’s a look at the trend from the last 18 months:

Here are the numbers from all 15 different local or regional job board sites that we review weekly for WRAL TechWire’s exclusive Jobs Report for “startup” jobs:

Check back next week for an update on the WRAL TechWire jobs report.