AI trainer emerges as fastest-growing cross-border role: New report

MAJOR shifts are transforming the global labour market as hiring becomes increasingly about assembling capabilities across borders, roles and even entirely new categories of work.

Insights from Deel’s 2025 State of Global Hiring Report – based on more than one million worker contracts spanning over 37,000 companies across more than 150 countries – suggest these shifts are structural and accelerating.

The emergence of artificial intelligence training as a distinct, global profession stands out as a major global shift.

“AI trainer roles barely existed two years ago,” says Lauren Thomas, economist at Deel. “In 2025, AI trainer roles emerged as the single fastest-growing cross-border role on our platform, with general AI trainer roles hired from abroad growing 283 per cent.”

Deel identified organisations and businesses in Singapore as leading the region in hiring for AI trainers in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region in 2025.

“AI is creating jobs in APAC, not just replacing them,” says Thomas.

Over 70,000 workers now train AI systems across more than 600 organisations globally, performing tasks from basic data annotation to expert-level feedback in medicine, economics and translation.

The trend reflects both the rapid adoption of AI and the continued need for human input to improve these systems.

In practice, building AI capability is no longer just about hiring engineers, but also assembling a broader and more diverse talent base, often across borders.

In APAC, India and the Philippines account for the second and third highest percentage of AI trainers on Deel.

Higher demand for product and commercial roles

The rise of AI trainers is one example of how hiring priorities are changing.

More broadly, companies are increasingly investing in roles tied directly to growth, customer experience and revenue.

“In Singapore, rising pay for product and commercial roles reflects how companies are prioritising profitability, customer retention and faster go-to market execution in a challenging business environment,” notes Thomas.

Compensation for product managers increased by 70 per cent between 2024 and 2025, while customer service representatives and sales account managers recorded gains of more than 30 per cent and 28 per cent respectively.

“This suggests employers are willing to pay more for roles that directly influence roadmap, revenue and customer experience,” says Thomas.

These are the roles that sit at the intersection of strategy, execution and revenue.

As competition intensifies and markets become more complex, these functions are becoming increasingly strategic, requiring technical knowledge and the ability to interpret customer behaviour, adapt to local conditions and execute effectively.

For companies, this suggests that hiring strategies must evolve from a focus on operational roles to investing in the functions that create and capture value.

Cross-border hires for tech roles

Despite these shifts, core tech talent is still essential and demand for software developers remains constant.

Across Singapore and the wider APAC region, developers continue to dominate hiring across borders, reflecting the centrality of digital infrastructure.

What has changed is how companies access this talent.

Software engineering expertise is not concentrated in a single geography but distributed throughout strong talent pools across South-east Asia, South Asia and Europe.

As a result, companies must look beyond their domestic labour pools to access the skills they need, notes Thomas.

For firms in Singapore, this has become a defining feature of how teams are built: High-skilled talent is increasingly sourced internationally, often combined with local product and commercial leadership.

This will likely intensify as Singapore’s new AI and technology track Overseas Networks and Expertise (One) Pass visa, expected to start in January next year, strengthens the city-state’s ability to attract top AI and tech talent.

Globally, software developers made up 28 per cent of international hires among top start-ups, followed by tech sales (6.2 per cent), business developers (4 per cent) and AI engineers (2 per cent).

“In APAC, software developers are the most in-demand cross-border hire in Australia, Japan, New Zealand and Singapore,” says Thomas.

The result is a more distributed workforce.

From outsourcing to capability-driven hiring

Taken together, these trends point to a shift in the underlying logic of global or cross-border hiring.

Companies are now increasingly hiring internationally to access specific capabilities, rather than simply to lower expenses.

This is evident in the behaviour of high-growth start-ups that are recruiting from high-income markets such as the UK, Canada and Germany.

“Among almost 100 start-ups founded between 2020 and 2025 that raised at least US$100 million in funding, more than 1,400 cross-border employees were hired as employees of record in 2025,” says Thomas.

Fifty-five per cent of these start-ups are headquartered in the US, with additional concentration in the UK, Israel, France, Sweden and Germany.

This shift is particularly relevant for Singapore-based companies that need to scale regionally despite a relatively small domestic labour pool.

Competing must focus away from cost to assembling the right mix of skills and talent, be they AI expertise, product leadership or local market knowledge.

In this context, global hiring becomes a strategic tool that allows companies to bridge capability gaps, accelerate innovation and expand into new markets more effectively.

Building global teams

To address these shifts, companies are beginning to rethink how they operationalise hiring.

Rather than stitching together multiple local tools and vendors, there is a growing shift towards unified platforms that connect hiring, human resources, payroll and compliance into a single system.

For firms looking to leverage global talent, especially in tech, whether AI trainers, developers or specialised product roles, this kind of infrastructure can be a critical enabler.

Platforms such as Deel allow companies to hire employees in markets where they do not have a legal entity, engage contractors compliantly and manage payments across multiple countries.

This simplifies the process of accessing global talent and, more importantly, allows firms to scale their workforce without having to rebuild their operational systems each time they enter a new market.

In a global hiring landscape defined by speed and flexibility, this capability can make a significant difference.

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