Aon plc has expanded its Radford McLagan Compensation Database to include artificial intelligence job families, as demand for AI talent grows across industries.
The Dublin-based professional services firm announced the update March 31. The new AI job families cover roles such as head of AI, applied research scientist, machine learning engineer and AI ethics specialist. The database now covers more than 30 million employees across 115 countries and 150 job functions.
Byron Beebe, chief executive officer of Human Capital for Aon, said the pace of change is putting pressure on traditional compensation frameworks.
“AI is requiring organizations to make faster decisions in an environment where roles, skills and expectations are changing in real time. As organizations redesign jobs to keep pace with AI, traditional frameworks are struggling to keep up. By expanding the Radford McLagan Compensation Database with new AI job families and enhanced analytics, we’re helping leaders ground pay decisions in current, defensible market data — even as the market continues to evolve.”
Fastest-growing roles
According to data from the database, several AI-related roles are among the fastest-growing in the market. These include:
- Machine learning engineers
- Applied data and research scientists
- AI platform engineers
The data also shows rising demand for adjacent skills such as data engineering and cybersecurity. Aon says pay premiums for AI-driven skills are increasing pressure on organizations to stay competitive while keeping compensation decisions fair and defensible.
Employers are increasingly expecting roles to blend technical expertise with responsibilities in strategy, governance, risk and operations. Aon says job scope is changing faster than traditional role definitions and compensation frameworks were designed to handle.
Platform enhancements
Alongside the new job families, Aon updated the database with several features aimed at helping human resources leaders work with compensation data more efficiently.
The platform now supports direct connections to client human resources information systems and applicant tracking systems through application programming interface links. This allows organizations to submit compensation data in formats that reflect how roles actually exist today. A real-time validation dashboard flags inconsistencies and reduces manual effort.
Aon also added AI-powered job matching tools that use natural-language instructions to match roles to market benchmarks and generate pay reports. The firm’s AI Compensation Assistant allows users to access compensation data on demand through simplified workflows.
The database now also pulls in live labour market signals alongside its validated survey data to give organizations more current context for pay decisions.
Jason Trull, global head of talent data solutions for Aon, said the quality of the underlying data matters more as scrutiny of pay decisions increases.
“Compensation leaders are being asked to move faster on AI driven roles while also standing behind their decisions under increased board and regulatory scrutiny. In that environment, defensibility matters as much as speed, and the quality of the underlying benchmarks becomes critical.”
About the database
The Radford McLagan Compensation Database has been in operation for more than 50 years. More than 8,500 organizations rely on it. Aon describes the database as built on validated, non-crowdsourced data, and says it is powered by the firm’s Human Capital Analytics platform.
