Tech Hiring Trends 2026: What Shrank, What Grew and What the Data Shows

Open the New York Fed's table of job outcomes by college major and sort it by unemployment. Out of 73 majors, computer engineering has the second-highest rate (7.8%) and computer science the fourth (7.0%), against 4.2% for all recent graduates. Yet computing graduates working full time earned a median of $87,000 to $90,000 a year early on, against $58,000 for all graduates, and far fewer were stuck in jobs that don't need a degree. These are US figures for 2024.

Hard to get in, good once you're in. Here is what shrank, what grew, and what the numbers can't tell you.

Is tech hiring really down in 2026?

Yes, against the boom and against 2020, though software job ads have been climbing since spring 2025.

Job ads. Indeed's job postings index sets US postings on 1 February 2020 to 100. Software development postings more than doubled to 233.8 on 28 February 2022, then fell to 61.1 on 17 May 2025, about 39% below the pre-pandemic level. By 23 October 2026 they were back at 80.8: about 24% higher than a year earlier, but still about 19% below February 2020, while all US postings were slightly above it, at 103.7.

People hired. SignalFire, a venture capital firm that tracks hires through its own database of professional profiles, found hiring at 12 large tech companies, among them Alphabet, Meta, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft, 25% below its 2019 level in the year to about mid-2026. Early-stage startups were only 4% below. Both had peaked far above 2019 in 2022: big tech at 63% above, startups at 71%.

So part of the slump is the hangover from an unusual boom, and engineering held up better than the jobs around it. At the big companies, engineering hiring was 11% below 2019, against 48% below for design, 39% for product management and 36% for marketing. At startups it was 7% above 2019.

Why is it so hard to get an entry-level tech job?

Because the sharpest fall is at the bottom of the ladder. SignalFire found new-graduate and entry-level hiring about 65% below 2019 at the big tech companies and about 76% below at early-stage startups. The chart sets that next to hiring at all levels.

Job ads show the same thing from the employer's side. Among US tech postings on Indeed that state an experience level, the share asking for at least five years rose from 37% to 42% between mid-2022 and mid-2025. In February 2025, senior and other higher-level titles were 19% below their February 2020 level, and standard or junior titles 34% below. And 71% of the software rebound between May 2025 and May 2026 came from senior roles.

Payroll and resume data agree. A Stanford Digital Economy Lab study of payroll records from ADP, a large payroll company, found that employment of 22- to 25-year-olds in the jobs most exposed to AI fell about 11% from November 2022 to June 2026, while it grew about 10% in the least exposed jobs. That is a 19% shortfall against the path it would have followed, with no such gap for older workers. ("Exposed" means a job's tasks score high on ratings of what AI could speed up, not what people actually use it for.) A Harvard working paper found that at firms that began adopting generative AI, junior employment fell about 9% against other firms after six quarters, while senior employment kept its trend. In both studies the fall came from hiring fewer young or junior workers, not from firing more.

Which other roles lost ground?

Among engineering specialties, front-end engineers lost the most: SignalFire found their share of engineering roles down about 25% since 2022, the steepest fall of any specialty. That is a share of roles held by people, not a count of job ads, and the report doesn't measure why it fell.

Which engineering roles are growing in 2026?

In SignalFire's data, the specialties that gained the most ground since 2022, as a share of engineering roles, build AI or work with customers.

Engineers who work with the customer

A Forward Deployed Engineer is a software engineer who works directly with customers. LinkedIn describes it as a role that helps organizations put AI solutions in place. Palantir drew the line in a 2019 blog post: its software engineers build one capability that many customers use, while a forward deployed engineer serves "one customer, many capabilities."

SignalFire found Forward Deployed Engineers' share of engineering roles up 30% since 2022. On LinkedIn, Forward Deployed Engineer is now the third most common AI job in US job postings (August 2026). And in LinkedIn's Economic Graph report, Gen Z is more than two-thirds of its hires. More in What is a Forward Deployed Engineer?

Engineers who own the product

A Product Engineer is a full-stack developer who builds for real users and helps decide what to build; that is how PostHog defines the role. The idea isn't new: in 2019 Gergely Orosz described "product-minded" engineers as developers with a strong interest in the product itself.

Our own count of about 360 public company job boards, as of 26 October 2026, found 459 open Product Engineer roles at 301 companies, and 74% of them build with LLMs (large language models) and AI agents. In our count of Hacker News "Who is hiring?" posts, 7.6% mention Product Engineers (January to October 2026), up from 5.2% in 2025 and 3.9% in 2024. Of the 234 Y Combinator startups hiring engineers on YC's public jobs pages on 26 Oct 2026, 31 (13%) had a Product Engineer opening. These counts cover different groups, so don't compare them, and the last is a snapshot of one day. More in What is a Product Engineer?

AI engineers, and AI in ordinary engineering jobs

LinkedIn found that US AI job postings roughly doubled between 2023–2024 and 2025–2026, and that AI Engineer overtook Machine Learning Engineer as the most common AI role. AI engineer also topped LinkedIn's Jobs on the Rise 2026 list of fast-growing US job titles; people moved into it most often from software engineer, data scientist and full stack engineer roles. More in What is an AI engineer?

AI also spread into everyday engineering jobs. In December 2025, at least one in five US software development postings on Indeed mentioned AI, and 37% of the software rebound from May 2025 to May 2026 came from jobs with AI in the title. To weigh the three roles against each other, see our comparison of Product, Forward Deployed and AI Engineers.

Is AI taking software engineering jobs?

This is where the sources disagree. Studies that zoom in on young or junior workers find a real hiring squeeze. Studies of the whole labor market find no broad disruption. Both can be true.

The zoomed-in studies are the Stanford and Harvard papers above. The wide-angle ones see little. Yale's Budget Lab found no discernible disruption of the US labor market in the 33 months after ChatGPT's release, and in May 2026 again found no strong evidence that AI had changed employment or wages in exposed jobs, while noting that hiring overall was low. A New York Fed survey of New York-area firms found that in the six months to August 2025, only 1% of service firms reported letting workers go because of AI.

They differ because they ask different questions of different data: one age group's hiring, from payroll and resumes, against the whole economy, from household and firm surveys. Even the Stanford authors call their findings "early, descriptive indicators", not proof that AI caused them. Timing is a warning too: Indeed found that the jobs most exposed to AI lost the most postings from 2022, and in the past year the same jobs rebounded the most; it also notes, citing other researchers, that those declines began before ChatGPT. As Indeed puts it, "correlation does not imply causation."

What does the hiring data actually measure?

Before you quote a number, check what is counted (job ads, people or survey answers), over what period, and for whom.

Almost all of these describe the United States; we found no Egypt-specific series.

What do tech hiring trends mean for engineers?

1. Show experience, even early. With more ads asking for five or more years, juniors compete on evidence: shipped projects, real users, code someone else reviewed.
2. Get close to users. Some of the roles that grew, such as Forward Deployed Engineers, work directly with customers. Practise it: support shifts, user interviews, demos.
3. Use AI, and check it. In Stack Overflow's 2025 survey, 84% of the developers who answered used or planned to use AI tools, but more distrusted their accuracy (46%) than trusted it (33%); the top frustration was answers that are "almost right, but not quite." Catching those is a skill, and harness engineering is how teams build the checking into the work.
4. Don't over-read one number. A narrower entry door and no economy-wide disruption are both true. Plan for the first, not for the end of the profession.

If product engineering appeals, our guide on how to become a Product Engineer covers the skills step by step.

What do tech hiring trends mean for companies?

Today's junior gap is tomorrow's senior gap. With entry-level hiring far below 2019 and more ads asking for five years or more, fewer people may have those five years to offer later. Teams that still train juniors are building a pipeline others are cutting.

Flatter teams need engineers who make product calls. Each engineering manager at the big companies now has about 12 engineers, up from 10 in 2019, and product managers support 22% more engineers. With fewer managers per engineer, we expect more product decisions to fall to engineers. PostHog itself calls product engineering a way of working more than a fixed role, one many startup engineers follow without the title. Hire for the work, not the job title.

Put engineers next to the customer. Ramp says it built its forward deployed team to win and serve large enterprise customers, with engineers scoping requests directly with customers instead of through account executives and customer success managers.

Add capacity without a new hiring round. With staff augmentation, a partner's engineers join your team, work in your tools and routines, and the partner manages and mentors them. That is how Nilerobot works with a global client in Europe: our engineers sit inside the client's own team.

Frequently asked questions

Is tech hiring recovering in 2026?

Partly. On 23 October 2026, Indeed's US software development postings were about 24% higher than a year earlier but still about 19% below February 2020. Most of the rebound has been in senior and AI roles.

Are entry-level software jobs disappearing?

There are far fewer, but they are not gone. SignalFire found new-graduate and entry-level hiring about 65% below 2019 at large tech companies and about 76% below at early-stage startups, a much steeper fall than hiring overall.

Is AI the reason tech hiring slowed?

The data doesn't prove it. Studies of young workers in AI-exposed jobs find fewer hires, studies of the whole US labor market find no broad disruption, and Indeed notes that the fall in AI-exposed jobs began before ChatGPT was released.

Which engineering roles are growing fastest in 2026?

In SignalFire's data, the share of AI and machine learning engineers grew 39% since 2022, Forward Deployed Engineers 30% and research engineers 28%. AI engineer also topped LinkedIn's Jobs on the Rise 2026 list for the US.

What do employers want from engineers in 2026?

More experience, and AI used with care. Among US tech job ads on Indeed that state an experience level, the share asking for five or more years rose from 37% to 42% between mid-2022 and mid-2025. In our own count of public company job boards (26 October 2026), 74% of the 459 open Product Engineer roles build with LLMs and AI agents.

Sources

1. Indeed Job Postings Index, US, by occupational sector. Indeed Hiring Lab. Data to 23 October 2026, read 29 October 2026.
2. AI and Job Postings: From Destruction to Creation? Indeed Hiring Lab (Guillermo Gallacher). 8 July 2026.
3. Experience Requirements Have Tightened Amid the Tech Hiring Freeze. Indeed Hiring Lab (Brendon Bernard). 30 July 2025.
4. January 2026 US Labor Market Update: Jobs Mentioning AI Are Growing Amid Broader Hiring Weakness. Indeed Hiring Lab (Cory Stahle). 22 January 2026.
5. SignalFire's State of Talent Report 2026. SignalFire (venture capital firm). 22 June 2026.
6. Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence (August 2026 version, PDF). Stanford Digital Economy Lab (Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar, Ruyu Chen). August 2026.
7. Generative AI as Seniority-Biased Technological Change: Evidence from U.S. Resume and Job Posting Data. Seyed M. Hosseini and Guy Lichtinger, Harvard University (working paper, SSRN). Version of 6 May 2026.
8. Evaluating the Impact of AI on the Labor Market: Current State of Affairs. The Budget Lab at Yale. 1 October 2025.
9. AI Is Probably Not (Yet) the Reason for Labor Market Weakening (PDF). The Budget Lab at Yale (Ryan Nunn). 7 May 2026.
10. The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates. Federal Reserve Bank of New York. 6 August 2026 (2026:Q2 data).
11. The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates: Outcomes by Major (data file). Federal Reserve Bank of New York. 4 February 2026 (figures for 2024).
12. Are Businesses Scaling Back Hiring Due to AI? Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Liberty Street Economics. 4 September 2025.
13. New LinkedIn research finds women account for just 26 percent of AI hires as AI jobs surge. LinkedIn (press release). 18 August 2026.
14. The AI Talent Divide: Strong Demand and Pay, Uneven Returns (PDF). LinkedIn Economic Graph Research Institute. August 2026.
15. LinkedIn Jobs on the Rise 2026: The 25 fastest-growing roles in the U.S. LinkedIn News. 7 January 2026.
16. Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025: AI. Stack Overflow. 2025.
17. Dev versus Delta: Demystifying engineering roles at Palantir. Palantir Blog. 8 April 2019.
18. Forward Deployed Engineering. Ramp Builders Blog (Leo Mehr). 5 August 2025.
19. What is a product engineer? (Product Engineer Handbook). PostHog. Undated, read 29 October 2026.
20. Product engineer vs software engineer: How are they different? PostHog (Ian Vanagas, Jina Yoon). 8 December 2025.
21. The Product-Minded Software Engineer. The Pragmatic Engineer (Gergely Orosz). 5 September 2019.
22. Our own count of about 360 public company job boards (Ashby, Greenhouse, Lever, Workable, Recruitee): open Product Engineer roles posted in the last 180 days, hardware left out. Nilerobot. 26 October 2026.
23. Our count of Hacker News "Who is hiring?" posts, January to October of 2024, 2025 and 2026. Nilerobot. Counted 26 October 2026.
24. Our read of Y Combinator's public jobs pages (a selection of about 300 of its most active companies, not all of YC), current openings only. Nilerobot. 26 October 2026.