Malt CEO Vincent Huguet reported an unprecedented surge in demand for AI agent skills across European freelance markets at VivaTech 2026 on June 17. Companies are pivoting their hiring strategies from traditional developer roles to prioritizing builders who can architect, configure, and deploy autonomous agents, according to France 24.
Beyond Tech Hiring
The demand shift extends beyond technology companies. Non-tech verticals are now competing for agent expertise, signaling a broadening economic impact of agentic AI adoption. Companies that previously sought software developers, data engineers, or IT consultants are redirecting budgets toward freelancers who can build and manage agent workflows.
Malt, a European freelance marketplace, is positioned to observe these shifts in real time. The platform connects companies with independent professionals across Europe, and hiring pattern changes on the platform reflect broader workforce demand signals.
The Skill Transition
The specific skills companies are seeking have shifted from model training and prompt engineering toward agent architecture: designing multi-step workflows, configuring tool integrations, managing agent authentication and permissions, and building governance layers for autonomous systems. The transition mirrors the shift from “data scientist” as the hot hire in 2018-2020 to “ML engineer” in 2021-2023 to “agent builder” in 2025-2026.
Huguet’s data from VivaTech suggests this is not a niche trend. When a major freelance marketplace’s CEO presents hiring pattern data at Europe’s largest tech conference, the signal reaches the companies making budget allocation decisions for the next quarter.
The Broader Labor Pattern
The Malt data arrives alongside other signals that agent-era work is reshaping employment structures. Scale AI’s Remote Labor Index, published the same day, found that top AI agents complete only 4.17% of professional freelance tasks to client standard. The gap between corporate demand for agent builders and agents’ actual ability to replace freelance work creates a specific labor market dynamic: companies need humans who can build agents, precisely because agents cannot yet do the work those companies want to automate.
This dynamic creates a temporary but intense demand spike for a skill set that did not exist at scale two years ago. How long that demand lasts depends on how quickly agent capabilities improve, according to France 24.