SFT jobs in 2026 — demand, top roles hiring, and related skills
As of 2026-09-03, SFT appears in 189 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the past 90 days — most often required for Machine Learning Engineer roles, with demand up 8% vs the prior 4 weeks.
Last updated · 90d ending 2026-09-03
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Frequently asked questions about SFT
+Is SFT in demand in 2026?
Yes. SFT appears in 189 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the 90 days ending 2026-09-03, with demand up 8% vs the prior 4 weeks. It is most often required for Machine Learning Engineer roles (15% of Machine Learning Engineer postings list it).
+What jobs require SFT?
According to the Skillenai jobs index over the 90 days ending 2026-09-03, the job titles most likely to require SFT are Machine Learning Engineer (15% of postings list SFT), AI Field Engineer (9% of postings list SFT), ML Engineer (6% of postings list SFT).
+What skills are commonly paired with SFT?
Across job postings indexed by Skillenai (90 days ending 2026-09-03), SFT most often appears alongside Python, fine-tuning, DPO, RLHF, PyTorch.
+Where is SFT most in demand?
As of 2026-09-03, the metro areas posting the most jobs requiring SFT are San Francisco, New York City, London, San Mateo, Singapore, 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
Job titles most likely to require SFT
| Role | Postings mentioning | % requiring |
|---|---|---|
| Machine Learning Engineer | 29 | 15.3% |
| AI Field Engineer | 17 | 9.0% |
| ML Engineer | 12 | 6.3% |
| Software Engineer | 11 | 5.8% |
| Research Engineer | 10 | 5.3% |
| AI Engineer | 9 | 4.8% |
| Data Scientist | 6 | 3.2% |
| Deployed Engineer | 6 | 3.2% |
| Research Scientist | 6 | 3.2% |
| AI Research Scientist | 5 | 2.6% |
Top metros hiring for SFT
| Name | Postings | Share |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | 23 | 12.2% |
| New York City | 16 | 8.5% |
| London | 13 | 6.9% |
| San Mateo | 10 | 5.3% |
| Singapore | 10 | 5.3% |
| San Jose | 8 | 4.2% |
| Seattle | 8 | 4.2% |
| Mountain View | 5 | 2.6% |
| Palo Alto | 5 | 2.6% |
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 2026-09-03. 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
- 61f73c7e7692e7f8
- data_as_of
- 2026-09-03
- 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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