• Saudi Arabia is the MENA regional leader in disruptive technology skills like nanotechnology and material sciences
  • Kingdom is seeing an inflow of AI professionals as the fastest-growing AI skills hint at Gen AI

Riyadh: LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional social network with over 1 billion members globally, is publishing insights into the latest talent trends in Saudi Arabia today.

With over 9 million members in the kingdom, LinkedIn’s latest data offers a look into the Saudi workforce as it undergoes a rapid transformation to meet the ambitions of Saudi Vision 2030 while taking advantage of the opportunities that emerge from the rise of artificial intelligence.

Saudi Arabia proving attractive for tech talent in the region

LinkedIn’s data shows that the workforce is increasingly adopting digital skills in line with economic transformation in the kingdom. Key observations include:

  • Saudi Arabia ranks first in MENA in several disruptive digital skills such as Development Tools, Materials Sciences and Nanotechnology. These skills are associated with developing new technologies that are expected to impact the labor market in the coming years.
  • The country ranks second in the MENA region across all digital skills categories on an aggregate level, following the United Arab Emirates.
  • It ranks in the upper percentile in applied digital skills like Animation and Computer Graphics within the MENA region and well above the global average in Animation.
  • Saudi Arabia is also above the global average in cybersecurity trends: 3.1% compared to 2.5% globally. Notably, the kingdom is also steadily catching up to global trends in gender diversity in this industry.

AI skills and talent on the rise in the kingdom

Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) is on the rise globally, and within Saudi Arabia 79% of employees believe that AI will significantly change the way they work in the next year.

KSA is already on an upward trajectory in its AI talent, having doubled this talent pool between 2016 and 2023. This trend looks to be accelerating as well with the ratio of AI talent hiring relative to overall hiring growing 24% year-over-year.

In terms of AI skills penetration, Saudi Arabia jumped ahead five positions in the last year alone to the 30th position (from 35th in 2023). Part of this has been attributed to the increased migration of AI professionals into the country: LinkedIn data shows that KSA has a positive net flow of AI talent, ranking 15th globally in AI talent attraction relative to population size, up from 24th last year.

This upward trend is supported by new data that shows how AI skills are being adopted nationwide. LinkedIn’s data highlights that the fastest-growing AI skills in Saudi Arabia are Reinforcement Learning, Pattern Recognition, Predictive Modelling, Supervised Learning, PyTorch; all of which support the development of Generative AI.

Ali Matar, EMEA Growth Markets Leader and Head of LinkedIn MENA, says “The latest data on labor market trends provides further insights into how Saudi Arabia is transforming into one of the most attractive places to work in the region as it marches towards Vision 2030. The insights are indeed a nod to the kingdom’s efforts to establish itself as an AI and data leader and signal a growing tech industry that is curating a savvy and adaptive workforce”.

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