AI trainers surge as NZ firms ramp up global hiring

Deel has reported an increase in cross-border hiring by New Zealand businesses, with software developers and sales managers the most common roles recruited from overseas.

Deel analysed more than one million worker contracts across 37,000 organisations in more than 150 countries. The findings point to four shifts in international hiring and pay: AI training emerging as a distinct job category; well-funded startups recruiting abroad for specialist skills; remote workers drifting back towards major cities; and contractors in volatile economies increasingly using US dollars and stablecoins.

For New Zealand employers, the most common locations for remote workers hired from abroad were the US, India and the UK. The US, Australia and the UK were also the top three countries hiring New Zealand-based workers, according to the analysis.

AI trainer roles

The data shows strong growth in "AI trainers", a category covering tasks such as data annotation and expert feedback in specialist fields. More than 70,000 workers are now training AI systems across more than 600 organisations, Deel reported.

General AI trainer roles hired internationally grew 283% in 2025 on Deel's platform, making them the fastest-growing cross-border role it tracks. The report frames the increase as evidence of new job types emerging alongside the rollout of AI tools across industries.

Pay rates varied sharply by work type and specialisation. Deel said 30% of trainers earned between USD $15 and USD $20 an hour for annotation work. At the other end, 6% earned more than USD $100 an hour for subject-matter expertise, while 19% earned between USD $50 and USD $75 an hour.

AI trainer roles were heavily concentrated in the US, which accounted for 58% of trainers, followed by India at 7.2% and the Philippines at 4.6%. Canada accounted for 2.1% and Kenya 1.7%.

The report also flagged a gender pay gap among US-based AI trainers. Deel said male trainers earned a median of USD $50 an hour, compared with USD $30 for female trainers, attributing the gap to occupational segmentation across specialisations.

Startups hiring abroad

The report also challenges the assumption that international hiring is driven mainly by labour cost savings. Among nearly 100 startups founded between 2020 and 2025 that raised more than USD $100 million, Deel said cross-border recruitment was concentrated in high-income countries.

The UK was the leading location for these hires at 12.2%, followed by Canada at 11.9% and Germany at 8.8%. Australia accounted for 5.8% and Spain 5.2%.

Software developers made up 28% of cross-border hires among these startups, followed by tech sales at 6.2% and business developers at 4%. AI engineers accounted for 2%.

Deel said top-funded startups were 13.6 percentage points more likely to hire software developers internationally than small and medium-sized businesses on its platform. It also reported that seven of the top 10 cross-border roles globally were in sales, marketing or other customer-facing functions.

Back to cities

Another trend is what Deel calls the "urban boomerang". After an earlier wave of migration away from major cities, remote workers have moved closer to large urban centres each year since 2022, when Deel began tracking the metric.

In the US, Deel said cross-border employees are now as close to cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and San Francisco as they were in 2021. Similar patterns have emerged for London and Paris.

One quote in the report argues the shift reflects a renewed concentration of talent in major metropolitan areas.

Pay growth and currency choice

On compensation, Deel said pay growth in 2025 was concentrated in senior leadership roles, with significant regional differences. In the US, project managers recorded 24.5% compensation growth, followed by chief operating officers at 21.6% and chief executive officers at 20%.

In Latin America, Deel said chief operating officers saw 99.8% compensation growth, while financial analysts recorded 195.5%. In Singapore, chief technology officers experienced 101% pay growth, while other tech roles in the same market contracted.

The report also highlights a shift in how contractors in high-inflation, volatile-currency countries choose to be paid. Deel said USD appeared in five of the 10 most common country-currency payment combinations globally in 2025. In Argentina, it said more contractors chose USD than the local currency.

Stablecoin use also featured in the data. Deel reported that Argentina led adoption, followed by Cameroon, South Korea, Turkey, Vietnam, Tajikistan, Sri Lanka and Ukraine.

Kristine Lipscomb, Deel's general manager of global mobility, linked the shift to changing worker preferences.

"The rise of 'currency hopping' and stablecoin payments is a direct signal that workers are taking global mobility into their own hands," Lipscomb said. "When a contractor in Argentina chooses to get paid in USD or stablecoins instead of pesos, it's not just a financial decision. It's a vote of confidence in the global, borderless economy. Companies that want to attract and retain the best talent worldwide need to offer the flexibility to match how modern workers actually want to be paid," Lipscomb added.