The Next Wave

As talk of artificial intelligence spreads from water conferences to utility boardrooms and plant floors, water professionals are increasingly asking how the technology will impact their careers. The answer is — unsurprisingly — nuanced: promising in the short-term, and profoundly uncertain in the long-term.

“The trajectory of growth of these technologies is so massive and so rapid that is very hard to anticipate this, in my opinion,” says Mazdak Arabi, creator and director of the One Water Solutions Institute at Colorado State University. “You can ask 10 different people who work in the water sector, you will get 10 different answers.”

Like other critical infrastructure industries, the water sector will likely see new roles emerge to support operational technology, including data scientists and analysts, robotics and automation technicians, AI infrastructure architects, AI ethics and governance specialists, and cybersecurity professionals. These roles help integrate AI into the day-to-day operations of complex systems, enabling utilities to make sense of more processes than ever before.

“This is a phenomenal opportunity for developing a workforce that is much more capable of understanding processes, guiding and managing operations that are much more rigorous, robust, and reliable, just because our capacities are massively increasing and understanding the systems,” says Arabi.

The impact on core water positions, for now, might look like evolving job descriptions.

“Most roles in water utilities persist, but their work shifts,” says Nirmal Kumar Balaraman, an applications engineer at Inframark LLC, which specializes in operating water infrastructure. “Maintenance staff, SCADA designers, and data analysts remain essential; they spend less time on manual rounds, ad-hoc screen building, and basic reporting, and more time supervising AI recommendations, verifying changes, refining displays, and interpreting insights for action.”

Balaraman predicts that the roles most transformed by AI in the water sector will be data historians and loggers, as data collection, tagging, and quality checks will likely be automated. Rather than “hand-moving data,” Balaraman says, these roles might focus more on defining data standards, ensuring integrity, and resolving edge cases — but they won’t be replaced outright.

“In the near future, AI is more of a copilot than an actual job replacement,” Gigi Karmous-Edwards, adjunct lecturer at North Carolina State University, specializing in digital transformation and smart water technologies, said at the 2025 Water in the West Symposium in Denver.

Karmous-Edwards shared the story of Jerry, an 82-year-old water distribution professional who fielded questions every day at his small utility, particularly about chlorine protocols. Through a generative AI pilot project with the Water Research Foundation, Karmous-Edwards helped create a chatbot, “What Would Jerry Do?,” which identified Jerry’s most asked questions and answers to preserve his expertise. It eventually grew into a virtual assistant that helps field workers find guidance from Jerry’s perspective — preserving his decades of institutional knowledge long after he retires.

These types of tools can help ease the transition as long-serving, baby-boomer employees are retiring at an increasing rate, leaving gaps in institutional knowledge and operational expertise — the so-called “silver tsunami” in the water sector.

However, Arabi and other experts emphasize that because AI technologies are growing so rapidly, it is impossible to predict their workforce impact beyond these short-term gains.

“There’s going to be a lot of alignment and realignment of how we do things because of these increased capacities within the next 10 years at least,” says Arabi. “And to be honest with you, after 10 years, nobody knows.”

Emily Payne is a writer covering the intersection of food, agriculture, health and climate. She is editor of the global nonprofit Food Tank.