AI fluency is now a standard requirement in technical roles. 85% of fullstack and backend job briefs submitted to its platform over the past six months included a specific request for AI-related skills, such as prompt engineering, OpenAI API integration, or proficiency with tools like ChatGPT, Copilot or Claude.

These demands are no longer limited to AI-specific roles. Developers hired for classic functions – frontend, backend or fullstack – are now expected to integrate AI into their workflow as standard. The result: job specs are shifting from static lists of technologies to dynamic assessments of how candidates use AI to build faster and smarter.

Based on this trend, Yotewo predicts that by mid-2026, at least 70% of developers will be what it calls “AI-native”: engineers who use AI tools across the full development lifecycle, not as occasional aids, but as core parts of their day-to-day work.

Additional platform insights reveal:

• 10% of Yotewo developers are now AI engineers – up from 4% a year ago
• An estimated 30% already use AI tools daily; the rest are actively upskilling
• 80% of roles begin as fractional; over 50% convert to full-time
• Most matches are made in under 48 hours, with work typically starting within five days

Aliaksandr Kazhamiakin, CEO and co-founder of Yotewo, said: “We’re seeing a shift away from job titles and tech stacks as the primary hiring filters. The new question is: ‘Can this person build autonomously, with AI at their side?’ That’s the bar.”

Denis Eremenko, COO and co-founder of Yotewo added: “AI fluency isn’t an edge anymore – it’s the entry ticket. Founders are picking people who know how to use AI to move fast, stay lean, and avoid reinventing the wheel.”

This shift is driving a new era in startup team structure. Founders are moving away from traditional hiring in favour of fast-assembled, just-in-time teams built to solve specific problems. A common configuration now includes a founder, a fullstack AI engineer and a frontend developer.

Kazhamiakin calls this the “IKEA-ification of startup hiring”, adding: “Founders are assembling modular teams designed to ship quickly. It’s not about long-term structure, it’s about what they can plug in right now to get to market faster. And it only works if everyone is already operating at AI-native speed.”

“We’ve got clients hiring a fullstack AI engineer and a frontend developer within days, and only a fractional CTO role. What matters most is that they can deliver at speed and thoughtfully integrate AI into the product strategy, not where they sit on an org chart.”

One company adopting this model is CaseCraft.AI, a UK-based legal tech startup. Faced with the challenge of building an MVP under an ambitious timeline, they used Yotewo to match a fractional Chief Product and Technology Officer and three senior developers within 72 hours. That team reduced delivery time by 40% and took the product from prototype to pilot in under three months.

“The developers had already shipped with LLMs before,” said Alexander Mints, co-founder at CaseCraft.AI. “They weren’t just technical – they understood our pace. There was no lag, no hand-holding. They just started building.”

*according to Yotewo.