The Dawn of AI Agents: The Jobs That Are Coming

Something is shifting in the world of work at a speed few had anticipated, and the numbers speak for themselves. According to the Observatory of the Politecnico di Milano, in just twelve months job listings requiring artificial intelligence skills have grown by 93%. This is not a projection or an optimistic estimate: it is a certified, concrete figure that tells the story of what is happening in the Italian and European productive landscape more clearly than any analysis could. And the direction is unambiguous: companies are no longer broadly searching for someone who "knows AI." They are looking for people who know how to manage artificial intelligence agents.

AI agents, for those not yet familiar with them, are autonomous systems capable of planning, executing, and coordinating complex tasks without requiring step-by-step human intervention. These are not sophisticated chatbots: they are digital entities that can manage processes, make operational decisions, and interact with other systems in a fluid, continuous manner. Italy's largest organizations have understood this perfectly well. Intesa Sanpaolo, in its Industrial Plan 2027-2029, explicitly cited agentic artificial intelligence as a strategic pillar. This is not a footnote: it is a declared choice, confirmed again in the official press release covering the first quarter of 2026.

UniCredit went further, already deploying a production-ready AI-powered platform for managing financing to small and medium-sized enterprises, with the stated intention of extending it to all corporate clients by the end of 2026. Meanwhile, PwC has opened dedicated job positions specifically for managing artificial intelligence agents, seeking professionals with a profile that until recently did not exist in any human resources catalogue.

All of this, however, represents only the antechamber of what is already happening in the United States, where this role already has a precise name: Agent Manager. It is a structured professional figure, with defined responsibilities, that oversees and coordinates teams of AI agents within organizations. In Italy and Europe this title has not yet entered the common vocabulary of HR departments, but the trajectory is clear: it will take somewhere between twelve and eighteen months for the term to stabilize and spread throughout the European labor market. A short horizon, in reality, when one considers how many transformations it will require.

The question that naturally arises at this point is not whether this transformation will happen, but who will be ready when it does. The history of the labor market, through every technological wave, has rewarded those who trained before demand exploded. Those who learned to code when the web was still a novelty, those who studied data when the phrase "data science" still sounded exotic. Today the cycle repeats, but at a far greater speed. Skills related to AI agents are transitioning from being a competitive advantage to being a baseline requirement in a matter of months, not years.

This does not mean that everyone needs to become a software engineer or technical specialist. It means, rather, that understanding how AI agents work, how they are orchestrated, how they integrate into business processes, and how their performance is evaluated will become an indispensable cross-functional competency — for those working in finance just as much as for those in consulting, marketing, or operations. The companies that have already opened these positions know this well, and they are moving accordingly.

The signal is clear, the data is public, and the company names are household names. Standing still, waiting for the change to consolidate before adapting, almost certainly means ending up at the back of the line. Those who move now will arrive first. Everyone else, as has always been the case, will be catching up.

Source: Artificial Intelligence Observatory, Politecnico di Milano; official press releases from Intesa Sanpaolo (Q1 2026), UniCredit, and PwC Italia.