open-source jobs in 2026 — demand, top roles hiring, and related skills
As of 2026-09-28, open-source appears in 757 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the past 90 days — Software Engineer has the most postings mentioning open-source, with demand down 27% vs the prior 4 weeks.
Last updated · 90d ending 2026-09-28
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Frequently asked questions about open-source
+Is open-source in demand in 2026?
Yes. open-source appears in 757 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the 90 days ending 2026-09-28, with demand down 27% vs the prior 4 weeks. Software Engineer accounts for the most postings mentioning open-source (32.8% of all postings mentioning open-source).
+What jobs require open-source?
According to the Skillenai jobs index over the 90 days ending 2026-09-28, among roles with at least 20 postings, the highest shares mentioning open-source are Applied Researcher (38.1% of that role’s postings mention open-source), Developer Relations Engineer (26.7% of that role’s postings mention open-source), AI Deployment Engineer (18.4% of that role’s postings mention open-source).
+What skills are commonly paired with open-source?
Across job postings indexed by Skillenai (90 days ending 2026-09-28), open-source most often appears alongside Python, AWS, TypeScript, Distributed systems, Java.
+Where is open-source most in demand?
As of 2026-09-28, the metro areas posting the most jobs requiring open-source are San Francisco, New York City, London, Berlin, Singapore, according to the Skillenai jobs index.
+How can I keep up with new open-source content and jobs?
Skillenai indexes news, blog posts, and research papers mentioning open-source alongside the jobs index. You can subscribe to a daily email digest of new open-source content from your Skillenai account.
Weekly job postings requiring open-source — last 90 days
Salary distribution
Box = 25th–75th percentile · tick = median · whisker = 10th–90th · USD, annualized
Roles most likely to require open-source
Among roles with at least 20 postings in the same period.
| Role | Postings mentioning skill | % of role postings mentioning skill |
|---|---|---|
| Applied Researcher | 16 | 38.1% |
| Developer Relations Engineer | 8 | 26.7% |
| AI Deployment Engineer | 9 | 18.4% |
| Computer Scientist | 2 | 8.0% |
| Developer Advocate | 4 | 7.4% |
| Applied AI Scientist | 2 | 7.1% |
| Founding Product Engineer | 1 | 4.8% |
| React Native Developer | 1 | 4.8% |
| AI Scientist | 4 | 4.7% |
| Cloud Developer | 2 | 4.2% |
Roles with the most open-source postings
| Role | Postings mentioning skill | Share of skill postings |
|---|---|---|
| Software Engineer | 248 | 32.8% |
| Data Scientist | 38 | 5.0% |
| Backend Engineer | 27 | 3.6% |
| Product Manager | 27 | 3.6% |
| Engineering Manager | 23 | 3.0% |
| Machine Learning Engineer | 23 | 3.0% |
| Product Engineer | 19 | 2.5% |
| Applied AI Engineer | 16 | 2.1% |
| Applied Researcher | 16 | 2.1% |
| AI Engineer | 14 | 1.8% |
Top metros hiring for open-source
| Name | Postings | Share |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | 64 | 8.5% |
| New York City | 34 | 4.5% |
| London | 22 | 2.9% |
| Berlin | 17 | 2.2% |
| Singapore | 12 | 1.6% |
| Paris | 11 | 1.5% |
| Seoul | 10 | 1.3% |
| Bengaluru | 9 | 1.2% |
| Munich | 9 | 1.2% |
Skills commonly paired with open-source
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How this was computed
Counts derive from the Skillenai jobs index over the 90 days ending 2026-09-28. Skills are resolved against the Skillenai canonical taxonomy, so the same entity is counted whether a posting writes 'Python', 'Python 3', or 'python'. Role prevalence divides postings mentioning open-source by all postings for each role in the same window, ranking roles with at least 20 postings. Role distribution divides each role’s open-source postings by all open-source postings, including postings without a role. Shares need not sum to 100% for the displayed roles. Pages refresh weekly (or daily for the top-50 most-requested skills).
- source
- Skillenai jobs index, deduplicated daily
- entity_id
- fd39bbb40b6175a3
- data_as_of
- 2026-09-28
- window_days
- 90
The demand, skills, and geo numbers on this page come from the same Skillenai labor market index that powers our API. Use it for compensation benchmarking, hiring-competition analysis, and skill-adoption tracking.
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