SFT jobs in 2026 — demand, top roles hiring, and related skills
As of 2026-09-28, SFT appears in 221 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the past 90 days — Machine Learning Engineer has the most postings mentioning SFT, with demand down 46% vs the prior 4 weeks.
Last updated · 90d ending 2026-09-28
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Frequently asked questions about SFT
+Is SFT in demand in 2026?
Yes. SFT appears in 221 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the 90 days ending 2026-09-28, with demand down 46% vs the prior 4 weeks. Machine Learning Engineer accounts for the most postings mentioning SFT (13.6% of all postings mentioning SFT).
+What jobs require SFT?
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 SFT are Deployed Engineer (52.4% of that role’s postings mention SFT), Applied Researcher (16.7% of that role’s postings mention SFT), Machine Learning Research Engineer (11.8% of that role’s postings mention SFT).
+What skills are commonly paired with SFT?
Across job postings indexed by Skillenai (90 days ending 2026-09-28), SFT most often appears alongside Python, RLHF, PyTorch, DPO, fine-tuning.
+Where is SFT most in demand?
As of 2026-09-28, the metro areas posting the most jobs requiring SFT are San Francisco, London, New York City, San Mateo, Seattle, according to the Skillenai jobs index.
+How can I keep up with new SFT content and jobs?
Skillenai indexes news, blog posts, and research papers mentioning SFT alongside the jobs index. You can subscribe to a daily email digest of new SFT content from your Skillenai account.
Weekly job postings requiring SFT — last 90 days
Salary distribution
Box = 25th–75th percentile · tick = median · whisker = 10th–90th · USD, annualized
Roles most likely to require SFT
Among roles with at least 20 postings in the same period.
| Role | Postings mentioning skill | % of role postings mentioning skill |
|---|---|---|
| Deployed Engineer | 11 | 52.4% |
| Applied Researcher | 7 | 16.7% |
| Machine Learning Research Engineer | 4 | 11.8% |
| AI Research Scientist | 6 | 7.5% |
| Developer Relations Manager | 2 | 5.7% |
| AI Research Intern | 1 | 4.5% |
| Quantitative Strategist | 1 | 4.3% |
| ML Research Engineer | 2 | 4.2% |
| Applied Machine Learning Engineer | 1 | 4.2% |
| Product Operations Manager | 1 | 3.8% |
Roles with the most SFT postings
| Role | Postings mentioning skill | Share of skill postings |
|---|---|---|
| Machine Learning Engineer | 30 | 13.6% |
| ML Engineer | 15 | 6.8% |
| AI Field Engineer | 14 | 6.3% |
| Research Engineer | 12 | 5.4% |
| Software Engineer | 12 | 5.4% |
| Deployed Engineer | 11 | 5.0% |
| AI Engineer | 8 | 3.6% |
| Applied Researcher | 7 | 3.2% |
| AI Research Scientist | 6 | 2.7% |
| Data Scientist | 6 | 2.7% |
Top metros hiring for SFT
| Name | Postings | Share |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | 25 | 11.3% |
| London | 16 | 7.2% |
| New York City | 16 | 7.2% |
| San Mateo | 10 | 4.5% |
| Seattle | 10 | 4.5% |
| Singapore | 10 | 4.5% |
| San Jose | 7 | 3.2% |
| Mountain View | 6 | 2.7% |
| Palo Alto | 5 | 2.3% |
Skills commonly paired with SFT
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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 SFT by all postings for each role in the same window, ranking roles with at least 20 postings. Role distribution divides each role’s SFT postings by all SFT 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
- 61f73c7e7692e7f8
- 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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