{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/computer-systems-analysts/",
  "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology",
  "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.",
  "scored_at": "2026-08-11",
  "model": "claude-opus-5",
  "occupation": {
    "title": "Computer Systems Analysts",
    "soc_code": "15-1211",
    "category": "Tech",
    "us_employment": 519530,
    "median_annual_wage": 105850
  },
  "verdict": "EXPOSED",
  "risk_resistance": 37,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 9,
    "embodiment": 4,
    "liability_shield": 2,
    "trust_premium": 10,
    "judgment_accountability": 12
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Requirements documents, as-is/to-be process diagrams, UAT scripts, data-mapping tables and gap analyses are structured text generation that models produce at first-draft quality, which caps this at 9; what pulls it above the 6 line is elicitation itself — discovering that the shipping team maintains a shadow Excel workbook nobody mentioned in the intake meeting, and running the workshop where three departments are forced to agree on a single definition of 'active customer'.",
    "embodiment": "A 4 reflects a job done entirely in Jira, Visio, Confluence and Teams calls, with the only physical element being occasional presence on a plant floor or in a clinic to watch how the current system is actually used — observation you could do over video and often do.",
    "liability_shield": "No state licenses systems analysts, nothing you produce carries a stamp, and when a requirement is missed the vendor contract or the CIO absorbs it; the 2 rather than 0 acknowledges that CBAP/PMP or vendor certifications appear on job postings and occasionally on SOW staffing requirements, but they gate nobody's work.",
    "trust_premium": "A 10 is earned by being the person the operations VP calls before she calls IT — years of knowing which of her workarounds are load-bearing — but it stops short of the 13+ band because you are usually staffed to a project, replaceable at the next SOW renewal, and the sponsor's real relationship is with the delivery partner or the platform vendor.",
    "judgment_accountability": "The 12 sits at the top of real discretion: you decide what goes in release one versus the backlog, whether to configure or customize, and which vendor demo actually meets the requirement — calls that cost millions and get overruled by a steering committee, which is exactly why it isn't 15."
  },
  "rationale": "The documentation core of this job — writing requirements specs, drawing process flows, building cost-benefit spreadsheets, translating business asks into technical stories, drafting test plans and user guides — is exactly what LLMs already do at usable quality. What survives is the political and organizational work: sitting in a room with a finance director and a warehouse supervisor who disagree about what 'inventory' means, and owning the call on scope, sequencing, and vendor selection. No license, no signature requirement, so the only moats are stakeholder trust and accountability for whether the system actually gets adopted.",
  "outlook": "Headcount likely flattens or shrinks as one analyst plus AI covers the documentation load of three, while the stakeholder-facing, decision-owning slice consolidates into fewer, better-paid roles closer to program management.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "As spec-drafting, story-writing and test-plan generation get fully absorbed by tools like Copilot/Devin-style agents, the residual job becomes elicitation under conflicting stakeholder definitions, legacy data-model archaeology, and cutover sequencing — work that requires undocumented institutional knowledge no model has ingested. This is a genuine two-tier job and the judgment tier is what remains.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "If a named individual must be designated as accountable for AI system deployment decisions — as under EU AI Act Art. 26 deployer obligations, Colorado SB 24-205, and NYC Local Law 144 bias-audit duties — analysts specifying and selecting AI-containing systems become the documented owner of suitability and impact-assessment calls.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "If federal procurement or FedRAMP/CMMC-style rules require a named systems architect of record to attest to requirements traceability and security control mapping (analogous to the P.E. stamp sought in some software-engineering licensure bills, e.g. Texas's now-retired software PE), a signature obligation appears where none exists.",
        "plausibility": "unlikely",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "trust_premium",
        "change": "If cyber-insurance underwriters or big-4 audit engagement letters begin requiring that requirements and vendor-selection work for material systems be performed by a named human consultant rather than AI-generated artifacts — mirroring how insurers now demand named MFA/EDR owners — clients pay specifically for attributable human authorship.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "Even with all of these, the occupation stays mid-band: no existing license, low physicality, and the documentation core is already commoditized. Realistic ceiling is roughly the high 40s/low 50s, and only for analysts working on regulated or safety-adjacent systems — internal IT analysts at ordinary firms have no route to the liability or insurer levers."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 589060,
        "wage": 90920
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 574450,
        "wage": 93730
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 505150,
        "wage": 99270
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 505210,
        "wage": 102240
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 498810,
        "wage": 103800
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 497800,
        "wage": 103790
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 519530,
        "wage": 105850
      }
    ],
    "from": 2019,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": -11.8,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": false
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}