If you scroll the AI training job boards this month, coding work looks like it is growing. On the 16 platforms we have read since August, open roles in coding and software evaluation went from about 142 in the first week of August to 154 in the week of 19 October. Count the same roles the same way across the whole stretch, though, and the work shrank by about a quarter.

Both numbers are true. The gap between them is how a job board gets read, and it matters if you are deciding whether this work is worth your evenings.

Why a count of listings can rise while the work shrinks

Job boards change shape. In this stretch we changed how we read four of those boards (Handshake AI, Alignerr, Mindrift and Prolific), and roles that had been open all along came into view. Counted raw, that looks like hiring. Counted like for like, on the roles that did not move with those changes, open coding roles on the same platforms fell 24.2% between the week of 3 August and the week of 19 October. All AI training work on the same platforms rose 14.0% over the same weeks.

The flow says the same thing. Over the 28 days from 30 September to 27 October, these platforms listed 79 new coding roles and took down 145, and the coding roles open on them fell 15.0%. A coding role that came down had been up for a median of 43 days, against 33 days across all AI training work.

So there are fewer coding openings than a scroll through the boards suggests, and the ones you see have often been up for a while. Check when a role was posted before you spend an evening on its assessment.

What it pays

271 of the 304 coding roles open on 27 October (89.1%) state an hourly rate. The median is $60 an hour, with typical rates from $35 to $120, against $40 an hour across all AI training work.

The platform moves the rate more than the work does. Median advertised rates for the same kind of work, by platform:

  • Weekday: $105/hr
  • DataAnnotation: $95/hr
  • RemoExperts: $85/hr
  • Alignerr, micro1, Mercor and AfterQuery: $75/hr
  • Anyone AI: $60/hr
  • Invisible and TELUS Digital AI: $35/hr
  • Rise Data Labs and OpenTrain AI: $30/hr

These are advertised rates, not earnings. What you make depends on how many hours of tasks a project has for you.

Who can apply

Coding is one of the more open kinds of this work. 88 of the 304 roles (28.9%) accept applicants from any country, against 19.0% of all AI training roles. Of the 20 countries we compare, residents of the United States can apply to the most coding roles (230 of 304), then India (206) and Germany (175).

What the postings ask for

260 of the coding roles have a full description we can read. Of those:

  • 64 (24.6%) mention a PhD or master's degree
  • 33 (12.7%) mention an assessment or test
  • 7 (2.7%) mention a professional credential
  • the 112 that state years of experience ask for a median of 3 years

The titles say what the platforms think they are buying: "engineer" or "developer" appears in 166 of the 304 titles, "specialist" in 66 and "trainer" in 63.

Is anyone applying?

On our site, each open coding role drew 3.16 apply clicks a week, 1.12 times the average AI training role and the third highest of 12 kinds of work. Developers are interested. There are just fewer of these roles on the boards that have been around longest.

What this means if you are a developer looking at this work

  • Treat a big count of listings with suspicion until you know how it was counted. A new feed, a board read a new way, or one opening posted under many titles all look like growth.
  • Pick the platform before the role. The same kind of work is advertised at $30 an hour on one board and $105 on another.
  • Expect a screen: about one coding posting in eight names an assessment, and 112 of the 260 we can read state the years of experience they want.

How this was counted

Figures come from our report on the market for coding and software evaluation work, computed on 28 Oct 2026 at 20:22 UTC from the roles open at the end of 27 Oct 2026 on the public job boards of 27 platforms, read every hour. The week-by-week series uses the 16 platforms read since 3 Aug 2026 (13 of them list coding work); platforms added later are left out of it, so their arrival never reads as growth. Apply clicks are clicks on our site, not applications. The weekly series, the per-platform table and the method are in the coding and software evaluation market report.

I'm Alex from the AITraining.jobs team. We read the public job boards of AI training platforms every day; some platforms pay AITraining.jobs a referral fee when someone joins through our links, which never changes the figures.