software engineering jobs in 2026 — demand, top roles hiring, and related skills
As of 2026-09-28, software engineering appears in 2,717 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the past 90 days — Software Engineer has the most postings mentioning software engineering, with demand down 41% vs the prior 4 weeks.
Last updated · 90d ending 2026-09-28
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Frequently asked questions about software engineering
+Is software engineering in demand in 2026?
Yes. software engineering appears in 2,717 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the 90 days ending 2026-09-28, with demand down 41% vs the prior 4 weeks. Software Engineer accounts for the most postings mentioning software engineering (26.1% of all postings mentioning software engineering).
+What jobs require software engineering?
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 software engineering are Machine Learning Engineering Manager (20.3% of that role’s postings mention software engineering), Security Program Manager (20.0% of that role’s postings mention software engineering), AI Engineering Director (18.5% of that role’s postings mention software engineering).
+What skills are commonly paired with software engineering?
Across job postings indexed by Skillenai (90 days ending 2026-09-28), software engineering most often appears alongside Python, Distributed systems, observability, machine learning, APIs.
+Where is software engineering most in demand?
As of 2026-09-28, the metro areas posting the most jobs requiring software engineering are San Francisco, New York City, London, Seattle, Toronto, according to the Skillenai jobs index.
+How can I keep up with new software engineering content and jobs?
Skillenai indexes news, blog posts, and research papers mentioning software engineering alongside the jobs index. You can subscribe to a daily email digest of new software engineering content from your Skillenai account.
Weekly job postings requiring software engineering — last 90 days
Salary distribution
Box = 25th–75th percentile · tick = median · whisker = 10th–90th · USD, annualized
Roles most likely to require software engineering
Among roles with at least 20 postings in the same period.
| Role | Postings mentioning skill | % of role postings mentioning skill |
|---|---|---|
| Machine Learning Engineering Manager | 12 | 20.3% |
| Security Program Manager | 5 | 20.0% |
| AI Engineering Director | 10 | 18.5% |
| ML Software Engineer | 4 | 18.2% |
| Head of Engineering | 25 | 18.1% |
| CTO | 7 | 15.2% |
| Customer Value Architect | 3 | 15.0% |
| Engineering Director | 30 | 14.5% |
| Security Engineering Manager | 8 | 14.3% |
| VP of Engineering | 5 | 14.3% |
Roles with the most software engineering postings
| Role | Postings mentioning skill | Share of skill postings |
|---|---|---|
| Software Engineer | 708 | 26.1% |
| Engineering Manager | 354 | 13.0% |
| Product Manager | 102 | 3.8% |
| Technical Program Manager | 83 | 3.1% |
| Software Engineering Manager | 59 | 2.2% |
| Systems Engineer | 54 | 2.0% |
| Forward Deployed Engineer | 45 | 1.7% |
| Machine Learning Engineer | 43 | 1.6% |
| AI Engineer | 39 | 1.4% |
| Engineering Director | 30 | 1.1% |
Top metros hiring for software engineering
| Name | Postings | Share |
|---|---|---|
| San Francisco | 174 | 6.4% |
| New York City | 132 | 4.9% |
| London | 90 | 3.3% |
| Seattle | 48 | 1.8% |
| Toronto | 42 | 1.5% |
| Singapore | 35 | 1.3% |
| Dublin | 34 | 1.3% |
| Bengaluru | 31 | 1.1% |
| Washington | 29 | 1.1% |
Skills commonly paired with software engineering
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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 software engineering by all postings for each role in the same window, ranking roles with at least 20 postings. Role distribution divides each role’s software engineering postings by all software engineering 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
- 37278e53b96ca2ed
- 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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