AI Might Create a New Job: The Developer Inside Every Business

For the past two years we've been asking the wrong question about AI and software development. The question everyone keeps asking is: Will AI replace developers? But after spending time building software with AI coding tools, I’ve started to suspect something very different might happen. AI might not eliminate developers. It might create demand for more of them — just in places that never hired developers before. In particular, it may create a new role that many companies have never had: the internal developer. The Company With No IT Department Imagine a typical mid-sized business. Maybe 30–60 employees. They are good at what they do, but their internal systems look familiar to anyone who has worked outside the tech industry. Spreadsheets everywhere. Quotes built in Word. Customer notes stored in email threads. Information scattered across accounting software, shared drives, and manual processes. None of it is completely broken. But none of it is particularly efficient either. Historic