operations research jobs in 2026 — demand, top roles hiring, and related skills
As of 2026-05-17, operations research appears in 247 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the past 90 days — most often required for Data Scientist roles, with demand up 38% vs the prior 4 weeks.
Last updated · 90d ending 2026-05-17
Get a daily email digest of new operations research content
Skillenai indexes news articles, blog posts, and research papers that mention operations research. Click below and we'll open a pre-filled daily digest — change the cadence to hourly or weekly if you prefer, then save. Free account required (~30 seconds).
Frequently asked questions about operations research
+Is operations research in demand in 2026?
Yes. operations research appears in 247 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the 90 days ending 2026-05-17, with demand up 38% vs the prior 4 weeks. It is most often required for Data Scientist roles (22% of Data Scientist postings list it).
+What jobs require operations research?
According to the Skillenai jobs index over the 90 days ending 2026-05-17, the job titles most likely to require operations research are Data Scientist (22% of postings list operations research), AI Scientist (10% of postings list operations research), Applied Scientist (3% of postings list operations research).
+What skills are commonly paired with operations research?
Across job postings indexed by Skillenai (90 days ending 2026-05-17), operations research most often appears alongside Python, machine learning, statistics, data science, SQL.
+Where is operations research most in demand?
As of 2026-05-17, the metro areas posting the most jobs requiring operations research are New York City, Seattle, San Francisco, London, Los Angeles, according to the Skillenai jobs index.
+How can I keep up with new operations research content and jobs?
Skillenai indexes news, blog posts, and research papers mentioning operations research alongside the jobs index. You can subscribe to a daily email digest of new operations research content from your Skillenai account.
Weekly job postings requiring operations research — last 90 days
Job titles most likely to require operations research
| Role | Postings mentioning | % requiring |
|---|---|---|
| Data Scientist | 55 | 22.3% |
| AI Scientist | 25 | 10.1% |
| Applied Scientist | 8 | 3.2% |
| Product Manager | 8 | 3.2% |
| Data Science Manager | 6 | 2.4% |
| Machine Learning Engineer | 6 | 2.4% |
| Quantitative Researcher | 6 | 2.4% |
| Software Engineer | 6 | 2.4% |
| Data Analyst | 5 | 2.0% |
| Research Scientist | 5 | 2.0% |
Top metros hiring for operations research
| Name | Postings | Share |
|---|---|---|
| New York City | 24 | 24.7% |
| Seattle | 16 | 16.5% |
| San Francisco | 15 | 15.5% |
| London | 14 | 14.4% |
| Los Angeles | 8 | 8.2% |
| Bangkok | 5 | 5.2% |
| Bengaluru | 5 | 5.2% |
| Costa Mesa | 5 | 5.2% |
| McLean | 5 | 5.2% |
Skills commonly paired with operations research
Stay current on operations research without doomscrolling
Same one-click setup as above, plus you can pull the underlying stream into your own coding agent via the Skillenai API.
Explore related pages
How this was computed
Counts derive from the Skillenai jobs index over the 90 days ending 2026-05-17. Skills are resolved against the Skillenai canonical taxonomy, so the same entity is counted whether a posting writes 'Python', 'Python 3', or 'python'. Pages refresh weekly (or daily for the top-50 most-requested skills).
- source
- Skillenai jobs index, deduplicated daily
- entity_id
- b770c7729daad868
- data_as_of
- 2026-05-17
- 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.
Skillenai for recruiters →