Will AI kill (Data) Engineering (Software)?

yeah .... no

Feb 24, 2026

Well, you know I simply can’t resist throwing my hat in the ring. If everyone else is going to stand on a soapbox and decry the end of all data pipelines as we know it, you can be sure I’m going to climb to the top of the old oak tree and scream my truth to the glassey eye’d masses who’ve been sitting in their echo chambers for far too long.

You, and everyone else are lying in bed at night, staring at the ceiling, wondering “Am I going to be fired tomorrow, replaced by Sky Net, now I will have to pick up empty pop cans on the highway to make ends meat.”

I don’t suppose this is particular to Data Engineering, fear of the unknown has plagued the human soul since the first caveman hit two rocks together and started a fire. When the iron horse made its way across the Great Plains into the West, those old cowboys probably were wondering what was coming next.

It’s hard to deal in hard facts when we live in the social media-driven age, with a glut of information … factual and otherwise. Is the recipe for the day. Clearly, AI is, at a minimum, a fundamental shift in culture and technology, shaking the core beliefs and truths we once held as Gospel.

Attempting to level set ground truth in the age of AI.

I’m going to try to give a fair shake to every side of the argument, as to whether AI will destroy Data Engineering and Software as we know it. First, I think it’s helpful to step back from the situation and say outloud that …

AI changes everything
Fear mongering gets clicks
Lots of people and money have skin in the game
Changing fundamental ways of doing business takes time
The worst case senarios in your mind rarely end up that way

The discussion about the intersection of AI and any job, including software, is fraught with emotions, both real and not-so-real. Everyone has an opinion, probably strongly held, and that’s fine. I encourage you to take the middle ground, that’s probably where the truth lies … not at either end of the spectrum.

We have the AI doomers that exist on either end of the spectrum. Typically, they are either creators wanting clicks, or someone who has some sort of horse in the race … directly related to you having certain feelins and interaction with AI.

Hate AI and all it does
AI can do anything and everything

If we strip away what we know today and what we've seen over the last few years of the AI arms race, I think we have enough experience and lessons learned to make reasonable assumptions about what the future could look like.

That being said, the heartburn is real.

“Recent Gartner surveys reveal widespread anxiety regarding AI, with 79% of 
professionals fearing workforce disruption. Only 26% of job 
candidates trust AI to evaluate them fairly, and 32% fear it may 
reject their applications. Additionally, 53% of consumers distrust AI-powered 
search results and summaries.” 
     - summary of Gartner

Let’s be real, two things can be true at the same time. We’ve had, over the last few years, a softening economy that has affected tech. Interest rates, global uncertainty, conflict, and political unrest. Economic softness and jitters have been the meal served to us for some time now.

The big tech bubble from COVID has popped, and layoffs have been coming hard and fast for the last two years. Mind you, this started happening before, but it did overlap with the AI is going to eat everything crisis. Talk about bad timing.

It’s perfect if you are a fear peddler selling the next coding agent or skill to worried devs.

It’s also true that you’ve been fed the line for at least 2.5 years now, at full volume, that AI is going to take your software job. Yet. Here most of you still are, still writing code, ablbiet with Cursor and Claude … but here you are.

Why can’t two things be true at the same time?

AI fundamentally changes software
Not everyone loses their software job to AI

The less popular news, because it won’t get that many clicks, is the reality behind many pushes into AI. Let me share a little secret with you.

AI is technology. For multiple decades, companies have proved they are slow to adopt and easily fumble with new technology. Heck, even recent MIT studies show it isn’t all unicorns and sparkles.

What I’m trying to say there is a big gap, and risk, between the talking heads saying “Fire everyone, and use AI agents,” and that happening in the real world.

I’m not saying that some people won’t officially lose their jobs to AI. I’m sure it will happen here and there, but the chances of you losing your job to AI in the next five years are probably pretty close to zero.

The dark side of AI eating jobs.

The truth is, there are always people at risk of losing their jobs to automation and tech. That is nothing new and has been happening for centuries. The world changes, jobs and businesses change to meet those new demands and take advantage of new ways of doing business.

Let’s think about it from a Software and Engineering point of view. What are the levels and types of dev workers, and who is at risk of being replaced by AI?

What is AI good at today, what is it getting better at, and how does RISK play into this equation? One cannot leave risk out of the equation, because doing so would be unrealistic.

CTO’s, Engineering Managers, Product Managers, high-level Architects, Staff/Principal Engineers. These people are going nowhere. In fact, one could argue that they will become high-demand jobs. When you are dealing with an AI Arms Race, you will probably try to hire more of these people.

Senior+ Engineers are most likely to benefit from AI because they can be 10x’d with Cursor and Claude. You still need smart people to curate and handle AI power gently, with that human experience.

Could you make an argument that Mid-level and Junior Grugs will have a harder time not being replaced? Yes and no. I don’t think it’s that clean of a line. Why? Risk.

How many companies are brave enough, in a digital world where their product depends on technology that doesn’t break, to simply throw expensive, hard-to-train software engineers out the window in favor of an AI Agent that has no accountability? Now that is real risk.

What would they be waiting for? All the talking heads say that moment has already arrived. All the marketing departments for the AI SaaS vendors have been saying that for two years. AI Agents can already do the work of these people, so fire them already, and pay us!

Do you know what has happened?

It seems that companies at large have shown great interest in AI Agents and their adoption. But there has not been some catostrphic apocolypic layoff of all software engineers.

Why? Because AI Adoption != Layoffs.

Heck, if you go on any job board, what do you see? Tons of jobs, and tons of new jobs. AI engineer jobs. Who would have thought that a new technology would lead to the need for a new set of software engineers? If we didn’t have our collective heads so far up the rear ends of the AI Fear Mongers, this would have been fairly obvious.

Look, I could be totally wrong; that is possible. I encourage you to leave a comment below and tell me what I’m missing, what I don't understand, or any real data I should look at.

What then?

Heck, I’m not going to lie. I’m mostly an optimist and a realist when it comes to the intersection of AI and Software. I see my future in the dev world as secure, not %100 safe from normal economic cycles, but as safe as any other job.

The job boards appear to be full of data positions. I still get weekly LinkedIn InMails from recruiters. I’ve been told for over two years now that it’s all over, yet it’s not. In fact, I’ve been building Agents for work today.

What we are going to have Agents building Agents and talking to the business, understanding use cases, costs, architecture, and the nuances of what the CTO wants … and, with a single prompt, that all becomes production … serving customers and bringing in money without human intervention? Uhhhh … LOL!