Oracle Dynamic Skills

Oracle Dynamic Skills is the skills module inside Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM, Oracle’s HR system, and it comes only as part of Oracle’s HR subscriptions. Its AI infers skills for people and jobs from the HR records Oracle holds and from what employees write about themselves, each employee sets their own skill levels, and endorsements from managers and colleagues confirm them. The module costs $0 extra, so far, inside a subscription Oracle lists at US$15.00 a month for every employee, and for every contractor who uses the system or is tracked in it.

By Ashish Manchanda Published 16 Sep 2026 Last updated 16 Sep 2026
In one line

The skills record inside Oracle’s HR system, filled from job profiles, AI suggestions and what employees claim, with levels confirmed by endorsements.

Use it if

You already pay for Fusion HCM Base or Suite Employee, and a picture of skills by role, built from job profiles, what people claim and what colleagues endorse, would answer the question you have been asked.

Look elsewhere if

You need skills worked out from the work people do today, or skill levels set by something other than the employee and the people who endorse them. If your HR system is not Oracle, the module on its own is no reason to move, because it comes only inside Oracle’s HR subscriptions.

Price

Dynamic Skills costs $0 extra, so far, inside Fusion HCM Base or Suite Employee, and Oracle does not sell it separately. Oracle’s price list of 10 September 2026 puts HCM Base at US$15.00 a month for every employee, and every contractor who uses or is tracked in the system, with a minimum order of 500 people.

Mechanics

What it does, and how skills reach a profile

Dynamic Skills is part of Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM, Oracle’s HR suite, and Oracle launched it in June 2021. It has three parts: Skills Nexus, which builds your organisation’s own inventory of skills and jobs by combining an Oracle skills model with your data; Skills Advisor, which suggests skills; and Skills Center, where employees, managers and administrators see and manage them. One skills library serves job profiles, requisitions, courses and the gigs posted on Oracle’s Opportunity Marketplace, and Oracle matches people, jobs and related resources by meaning rather than by exact wording.

Oracle’s AI infers skills and updates employee profiles. For employees it works from profile fields such as business title, job name, career statement, areas of interest and expertise, education, certifications, previous employment and the skills already recorded, and for jobs, candidates and courses from the text already held about them. Suggestions start by matching a person’s job title to a small set of standard titles, which needs only “a very limited set of input data”, and the employee then chooses which suggestions to add. Oracle also shows the inferred skills across your organisation as a picture of its skills landscape.

A skill reaches a person’s profile in several other ways too. The skills on their job profile are added automatically as skills the role requires, and any manager above them in the reporting line can assign more. The employee can type skills in, while colleagues can add skills a peer should be developing and endorse skills the peer already has. Finishing a course or a gig adds the skills it lists, and administrators can load skills in bulk. An employee who imports a LinkedIn profile can also bring in skills that are not in your library, even if you have limited employees and managers to library skills in Skills Center.

For jobs, an AI agent reads job descriptions, job titles, the skills already on each job profile and other HR records, and proposes skills for each job profile with a confidence score. Administrators can review the proposals, or have those above a score they choose approved automatically. Once job profiles carry skills, Oracle compares each employee’s profile with their job profile and suggests courses in Oracle Grow to close the gap.

Where skill levels are switched on, each skill carries the level the employee selects, which they can change until it is validated. Validation adds up points for each piece of evidence: an endorsement from any manager above the person is worth 100, one from a colleague validated at the top level for that skill 75, one from a peer with the same manager 25 and one from anyone else 10, while a finished course or gig that lists the skill is worth 50. With automatic confirmation switched on and those scores left as published, a single endorsement from a manager confirms a skill. An AI-marked questionnaire can also suggest a rating with its reasons, and the employee can keep that rating or pick a different one.

Two settings decide how much of what people claim shows as settled. With automatic confirmation switched off, the profile shows the highest level selected, so an employee’s own rating stands even when a manager or peers endorse a lower one. With ‘Move skills to attained only after they’re validated’ switched off, a skill someone adds under ‘Skills I have’ shows as attained whether or not anyone has endorsed it. A required skill can count as meeting its required level without being validated, and where no level is set it counts as developed once the employee rates it or any other evidence is recorded. Choose those settings before anyone reports from the record.

For an Oracle customer, then, Dynamic Skills is one skills record for jobs, hiring, courses and gigs, filled from job profiles, AI suggestions and what people claim, with levels as firm as the endorsements and settings behind them.

In its favour

Where the module helps

If what you want is a place to keep skills inside an Oracle HR system, the module does several things well, and Oracle keeps adding to it, most recently with release 26D in September 2026.

It comes with two Oracle HR subscriptions

Oracle’s contract Service Descriptions, effective 6 August 2026, list AI-Based Dynamic Skills among the modules included in Fusion HCM Base and in Fusion Suite Employee, where applicable. If you pay for either, there is nothing to buy and only the set-up work to do, so you can see what it produces before anyone asks you for budget.

One skills list for jobs, hiring, courses and gigs

Because job profiles, requisitions, courses and gigs share one skills library, Oracle can suggest courses to close a gap it finds between a person’s skills and their job, as long as you also pay for Oracle’s Learning subscription. Your team does not have to write the skills for every job profile from scratch, because Oracle’s agent proposes them, and you choose whether someone reviews each proposal or whether those above a confidence score go in without a person checking them first.

A large library you do not have to build

At release 25A, Oracle’s ready-made library held 11,656 skills across 18 business domains in 30 languages, with 50,000 alternative names for its skills, so customers often no longer need to let employees type in their own, which keeps the list cleaner. You cannot add skills to Oracle’s own catalogue, but you can switch off any that do not fit and rewrite their descriptions. If you already use Lightcast, you can import its skills through your own Lightcast account, and from release 26D a connector brings TechWolf’s skills catalogue into Oracle.

You decide what counts as proof

With automatic confirmation switched on, administrators can change how many points each kind of endorsement earns, so a manager’s endorsement can be set to count for less than the full 100. Set up that way, one manager’s endorsement is no longer enough on its own to confirm a skill. Administrators can also hold back the skills people claim until those skills are validated.

The module also runs in Oracle’s restricted environments: Dynamic Skills is supported in its European Union Restricted Access, UK government and Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer environments, so an organisation whose HR system has to run in one of those can still use it. US Government Cloud customers can use Dynamic Skills too, without the AI features.

Limits

Where it stops

Each of these limits changes what you would need to budget for, plan or clear with others before you rely on the module.

You cannot buy it on its own

Dynamic Skills comes only as an included part of Fusion HCM Base and Fusion Suite Employee, with no price of its own. If your HR system is not Oracle, the only way to get the module is to subscribe to one of those two.

Every employee can see every other employee’s skills

The Skills Center and the skills in it are public, so any worker can look at any other worker’s skills, and the Skills Center section ignores the security you can set on sections of a talent profile, so the controls that restrict other parts of a profile do not restrict skills. If an administrator allows employees to add skills to each other’s profiles, anyone can do it without the employee knowing. If you answer to a works council or a data-protection officer, take this to them before the module is switched on.

Acting on a gap needs more Oracle subscriptions

Dynamic Skills can show you a gap, but the suggestions for acting on it come from other Oracle subscriptions. Skills Center shows job and gig matches only when Oracle Recruiting and Opportunity Marketplace are switched on. Course suggestions to close a gap appear in Oracle Grow, which comes with the Learning subscription, and career suggestions come from Career Development, which comes with Talent Management. On Oracle’s price list of 10 September 2026, Recruiting is US$8.00 a month per hosted employee, counted the same way as HCM Base, while Learning is US$5.00 and Talent Management US$7.00 a month per hosted named user, which is a separate licence count, so ask Oracle how many of those you would need. Each of the three has a minimum of 500. If closing gaps is the reason you want skills data, budget for these subscriptions alongside the module.

The agent that reads work systems has no release date yet

In August 2026 Oracle announced an Intelligent Talent Profiles Agent that keeps profiles “continuously updated” by inferring skills “from connected work-system data”. The announcement gives no release date and no price, so ask Oracle which release brings it, which systems it reads, and what it will cost before you count on it.

The AI works in English

The skills library is translated into 29 languages besides English, and the AI features Oracle calls AI Apps work only when the system’s language is set to English. From release 26A, suggested skills for courses appear in the language the person is using, as long as the course title and description are written in that language. If your HR records are kept in another language, ask what the suggestions will work from.

High-quality recommendations need a year of data

Oracle strongly recommends at least 12 months of Core HR and Talent Management data from live use, or 12 months of earlier talent profile data, plus 6 months of Recruiting data if you use Oracle Recruiting, for high-quality recommendations. For a company new to Oracle with no earlier talent profile data to bring across, that is a year of live use first.

Existing customers have had compulsory project work

Oracle required customers to move to Enhanced Dynamic Skills before release 26B, when support for the old version ended, and to move from its older machine-learning suggestions to generative-AI ones by the same point. The enhanced version needs every application using the Skills Center section to be on Oracle’s newer Redwood screens, and some existing set-ups are not yet eligible. Budget for work of this kind after the module is running, as well as before.

No named customers to check with

Oracle names no Dynamic Skills customers, so ask for a reference customer of your size that uses Dynamic Skills, and speak to them without Oracle on the call.

Money

What it costs, and what it costs to leave

Dynamic Skills has no price of its own and comes only inside two subscriptions, Fusion HCM Base and Fusion Suite Employee, so the price that matters is theirs. Fusion HCM Base lists at US$15.00 a month per hosted employee, with a minimum of 500. Fusion Suite Employee lists lower, at US$5.00 a month per hosted employee, also with a minimum of 500, but that figure is not a cheaper way to get the module on its own: suite pricing needs a contract of 36 months or more, the parts of the suite cannot be bought one at a time, and “you must buy additional base licenses”. Oracle marks the price list as for educational purposes only and subject to change without notice, and its US public sector price list of 4 August 2026 shows the same two figures.

The hosted employees Oracle charges for include all full-time, part-time and temporary employees, plus any agents, contractors and consultants who use the system or are tracked in it, so the number you pay for is set by that count rather than by how many people log in. The minimum of 500 is an order minimum rather than a limit on company size, so an organisation with fewer than 500 hosted employees still pays for 500 at list price.

If you already hold either subscription, the contract includes the module “where applicable”, so ask Oracle what that covers in yours. Going by Oracle’s 2023 Get Started guide, the module comes at no additional cost for Oracle Global HR customers, so far, but a disclaimer in that guide says it is not part of your licence agreement and cannot be written into any contract with Oracle, so rely on your contract wording rather than the guide.

Some AI in Fusion is charged separately. Oracle’s price list shows AI Agents at US$5.00 a month per hosted employee, with a minimum of 500, and AI Units, the allowance that some AI features draw on, at US$1,000.00 for each 100,000 units. Every Fusion customer receives 20,000 AI Units a month for each live Fusion environment, and Oracle may limit, reduce or block features that need AI Units once a customer’s balance falls below zero. The agent Oracle announced for reading work systems has no price yet, so ask whether it will need the AI Agents subscription, AI Units, or both.

Leaving is harder than starting, because the module exists only inside Oracle HCM. Another system can pull each worker’s public skills out of Oracle automatically, but the endorsements attached to those skills, the record of who vouched for each one, are still marked as controlled availability, which means Oracle offers that data only to selected customers. Choices made during set-up are also hard to undo later: skills loaded onto people’s profiles in bulk can afterwards be changed or deleted only through Oracle’s screens rather than by loading another file, Oracle-supplied skill catalogues cannot be deleted, and a catalogue you create cannot be deleted once it holds a skill. If you drop Lightcast, its imported skills stay behind and any references to them in your records have to be removed by hand, and moving free-typed skills into the Skills Center section loses any custom fields set up on the old sections. Work out how you would take the data out before you put it in.

There is a second route to this. The same job, built on the systems you already run, is usually a narrower piece of work, and we have mapped what that version looks like. See it as an agent

Before you commit

What to ask Oracle

  1. Your announcement of 11 August 2026 says a new agent will work out skills from connected work systems. Which systems will it read, which release brings it, and will it cost extra or use up AI Units?
  2. Show us, in our own system, a skill your AI added to an employee’s profile, and the data it came from.
  3. For a new customer, are automatic confirmation and ‘Move skills to attained only after they’re validated’ switched on or off, and how do customers of our size set them?
  4. A single manager’s endorsement is worth the full 100 points in your published scores. What stops a manager confirming a whole team’s skills in one sitting?
  5. At release 25D the AI-marked skill questionnaire was open only to customers approved for your Controlled Availability Program. Is it available to every customer on our release, and can we stop employees replacing its suggested rating with their own?
  6. Every employee can see every other employee’s Skills Center. How have customers with a works council or strict data-protection rules handled that?
  7. Which of Learning, Talent Management, Recruiting and Opportunity Marketplace do we need before employees see course, career, job and gig suggestions, and what will they cost us? Your 2025 user guide describes the learning features as Controlled Availability, so are they open to us?
  8. Your Service Descriptions include Dynamic Skills “where applicable”. What does that cover in our contract?
  9. Do skill suggestions work from HR records written in languages other than English, and does the AI need our system to run in English?
  10. If we leave, how do we take out every employee’s skills, levels and endorsement history, given that your documentation still marks endorsements as controlled availability?
Other options

Alternatives to Oracle Dynamic Skills, including buying nothing

If you run Oracle Fusion HCM, the main alternatives to Dynamic Skills are TechWolf, which connects to Oracle, and Microsoft People Skills, if your people work mainly in Microsoft 365. The third route is to use the module you may already have and buy nothing.

If you already run Oracle Fusion HCM, start with the module you have, because it costs you set-up time rather than a purchase. Before employees see it, decide whether to switch on automatic confirmation and the setting that holds claimed skills back until they are validated, and tell employees that everyone will be able to see their skills. Our guide to skills intelligence software sets out which questions a picture of skills by role can answer.

If you need skills worked out from the work people do before Oracle’s announced agent arrives, look at TechWolf, a skills product sold separately. It connects to Oracle as one of its job-data systems and reads Oracle’s job listings, talent pools and hiring workflows, so what it takes from Oracle itself is hiring data. TechWolf’s price is not published, so you would need a quote from TechWolf before you could compare costs. From release 26D, a connector brings TechWolf’s skills catalogue into Oracle, so ask both companies where each person’s skills would end up. Our TechWolf review covers what that product does and where it stops.

If your people work mainly in Microsoft 365, Microsoft People Skills works out skills from what people do in Microsoft 365 only. It comes with Copilot or Viva licences and needs no separate licence, so on top of either it costs $0 extra, so far. Microsoft says it is not designed for promotion or pay decisions, so do not expect it to settle a promotion or pay question either. Our review of Microsoft People Skills sets out the limits Microsoft documents.

Buying nothing is also a reasonable decision if neither the module you may already own nor a new product would answer the question you have been asked.

Sources and method Every statement about Oracle comes from Oracle’s own published material: its product page and brochure, its announcements, its user guide, implementation guide and question-and-answer document for Dynamic Skills, its release notes, its contract Service Descriptions and its price lists. What Oracle publishes about its own product is taken as its description of that product. TechWolf’s description of its Oracle integration comes from TechWolf’s own site, and what we say about Microsoft People Skills comes from Microsoft’s own documentation. The date beside each source is when it was last read.