Everyone is wondering what their job could look like in a few years’ time. Earlier this year we ran our “Who Brought the Monster?” event, the ‘Monster’ being AI, and the premise being how to turn a bad monster into a good and helpful one. In the session we referenced the then recently published (February 2026) Citrini Research ‘blog from the future’ - ‘The 2028 Global Intelligence Crisis’ (https://www.citriniresearch.com/p/2028gic), which envisioned a near-future jobs apocalypse. We also referenced the rather more balanced ‘Labor market impacts of AI’ report from Anthropic (March 2026), which found no systematic rise in unemployment among the most exposed workers, though it did see early signs of slower hiring of younger workers, and set out where it expected the impact to land.

Looking back at Anthropic’s model, and especially in the context of a Head of Digital, on the surface it could be viewed with a high degree of concern, but also as a strong indication of the opportunity that AI presents. My question was how the role itself will evolve. Jobs do not stay the same, they develop based on a range of factors including technology and that now of course includes what AI makes possible. I may be looking through my rose-tinted spectacles, but the blue shading could represent where AI has the greatest potential to enhance the role, and the gap between blue and red is how much of that potential is still untapped. In Computer & math, for example, AI could theoretically cover 94% of tasks, but only 33% are covered in practice. 

Source: Anthropic, Labor market impacts of AI (March 2026). Blue shows the share of each occupation’s tasks AI could theoretically perform; red shows how much AI is actually used for them today. Based on US occupational data.

The Head of Digital role does vary from sector to sector, but the responsibilities could be seen to span several, possibly six, of the occupational categories referenced: Management, Business & finance, Computer & math, Arts & media, Sales, and Office & admin. This doesn’t include healthcare, legal or life & social sciences; however, organisations in these sectors as well as others will employ their own Heads of Digital.

Therefore, if we had to pick the job title that sits closest to where the change is happening, Head of Digital would appear a very good candidate. It sits across customers, content, data, platforms, agencies and now AI.

Same title, differing responsibilities

One reason so many of the occupational categories apply is that "Head of Digital" does not mean the same thing everywhere and can cover at least four different areas of focus:

• Marketing: measured on traffic, leads and campaign return

• Operations: measured on cost-to-serve and self-service

• Commercial: measured on online revenue and conversion

• Technology: measured on delivery and platform strategy

Speed vs enhancement

I can see the change in my role, and the parts that AI is accelerating, but it’s more than acceleration and very clearly enhancement. I start a meeting or call now with the sort of context that could only have been dreamt of a few years ago. A lot of this context was available, but it was spread across the internet, so it meant a lot of time spent searching, then reading, then compiling. Now doing something similar with AI takes minutes, and more than that, what I am given is better in many ways than something that would have taken me days to produce.

AI has not just sped up work. It has made routine the work we used to skip because the time didn’t justify the value. And now it is routine, everyone is doing it. The new skill is what you do with these increased capabilities, and how you use them.

For a Head of Digital, what are the areas where AI brings speed, and where does it bring enhancement?

The domains of others

One view is that AI has taken domain expertise and democratised it. Another view is that it has taken that knowledge without asking. While this argument continues in courts and legislatures across the world, what is undeniable is that AI makes it easier for someone in one occupational category to gain insight into someone else’s. Given the span of categories I would assert a Head of Digital could cover, this is an interesting consideration. Someone occupying that role could be relatively non-technical but may need to consider technical aspects of Architecture & Engineering. AI is there to answer questions that previously would have required a meeting with an architect. The Head of Digital may be sent the contract from a potential new supplier. AI can provide a first pass, quickly highlighting areas of concern that previously would have required a meeting with legal counsel. I am not suggesting the architect or the legal counsel no longer has a role, but that role is later in the process and/or is required at points when levels of complexity increase.

Armed with enough technical, legal or other cross-category intelligence, and balanced with the sense and confidence to know what they don’t know, the Head of Digital can get further, faster, and carry far more influence across the business.

The questions we want to answer

Over the next few months we want to find out just how powerful the Head of Digital can become. We don’t mean powerful in the despotic sense, but as a driver of business value, customer success, revenue and cost management. We aim to uncover what the Head of Digital’s world truly looks like today, and how that is likely to change in terms of things like responsibilities, measurement and reporting structure.

How do you deliver in 2027 and prepare to deliver even more in 2028? Does progress necessitate an evolution to the Head of AI? Is this the route to a place on the board, to become CDO, and will CEO become a common next step?

Our research starts with these five key questions:

1. Who do you report to?

2. Which teams report to you?

3. What are you mainly measured on?

4. Who leads AI in your organisation?

5. How do you expect your role to change in 12–24 months?

What happens next

These are just the starting questions, and our research will evolve into a deeper set of insights series of conversations with Heads of Digital, CDOs and the people around them. We will bring the findings together in a report and share them at an event in London in February. Everyone who takes part will get the report first, and an invitation to the event.

If you are a Head of Digital, or the role is in your sights, and you would like to get involved, contact me at: jmy@codehousegroup.com