AI is reshaping the Cloud industry at extraordinary speed. Infrastructure is getting redesigned around GPUs, data pipelines, and AI workloads. New platforms and services are appearing almost daily, and demand for people who can build, operate, and commercialize them is accelerating just as quickly.
But there’s a question the Cloud industry cannot ignore: who gets the opportunity to build the AI-powered future?
New research from LinkedIn provides an answer you probably won’t like.
Women face triple disadvantage in AI careers
According to LinkedIn analysis, women accounted for just 26% of US hires into AI roles in 2025, compared with 50% of hires into non-AI tech occupations. At the same time, AI job postings have roughly doubled since 2023, with the typical US AI job posting commanding around $177,000 in listed compensation, compared with $80,000 for a typical non-AI role.
In other words, the industry is creating some of the most valuable career opportunities in the global economy—and women are not invited to the party at anything close to an equal rate.
The problem becomes even more pronounced further up the ladder. LinkedIn found that women hold just 13% of C-suite AI leadership roles at AI companies across 27 countries. Representation also falls sharply in some of the most specialized and highly paid AI positions.
Linked researchers identified three ways that women are being disadvantaged:
The Cloud already has a gender gap
The underlying problem isn’t new. BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT in the UK, found that women accounted for just 22% of UK IT specialists in 2024.
The imbalance is particularly stark in technical infrastructure roles. Analysis of government data showed women represented just 6% of IT engineers over 2020–2024, compared with 34% of IT project and program managers and 30% of IT operations technicians.
This is especially relevant to Cloud computing, where engineering, architecture, platform operations, networking and infrastructure remain fundamental skills.
The picture inside major Cloud companies reinforces the point. In its latest gender pay reporting, AWS EMEA’s UK branch reported women making up 27.5% of its workforce, with women representing only 19% of employees in the highest pay quartile. Microsoft reported women comprising 27% of its UK technical workforce and 25.2% of leadership in its 2025 gender pay report.
AI gives Cloud a chance to change the pattern
The data is stark, but an important opportunity exists. AI is creating new roles and new routes into technology. LinkedIn reports that AI Engineer has overtaken Machine Learning Engineer as the most common AI role in job postings, while roles such as Forward Deployed Engineer are also rising rapidly. VP of AI postings have increased roughly sixfold.
This creates a moment when the industry can either reproduce the demographics of yesterday’s infrastructure workforce—or deliberately build something more representative while tapping more deeply into 50% of the world’s talent pool.
That doesn’t mean “lowering standards”. It means widening the routes through which people acquire those standards: skills-first recruitment, retraining, apprenticeships, mentoring, flexible career paths and greater visibility of women already succeeding in Cloud and AI.
It also means recognizing that AI expertise isn’t limited to writing models. The future Cloud workforce needs people who understand security, governance, customer needs, operations, ethics, data and business outcomes, alongside technical architecture.
The industry has to act, not just talk
There are encouraging examples: AWS has invested in programs designed to help women develop Cloud skills and mentoring networks, while Google Cloud’s Launchpad for Women program has reached more than 11,000 women across roles including sales, leadership, marketing and finance.
The challenge now is to take that mindset beyond individual programs and into the industry’s everyday hiring, development and leadership decisions.
The analysis above is based on LinkedIn platform data covering member employment histories across 24 countries and U.S. job postings listed between 2023 and 2026.
Bonus postscript… Need a reminder of why gender balance is vital?
As the inventor of the Spanning Tree Protocol, Radia Perlman is widely known as “The Mother of the Internet.” In this special AMA session, the 2026 CloudFest crowd caught up with one of the architects of modern networking for an open conversation about how the Internet really works—and where it still surprises us. Hit Play to see why Dr. Perlman made so many new fans!
