State of Tech Hiring — Q3 2026
Comprehensive hiring analysis for Q3 2026: 11,161 listings, 208 companies, salary data and skill movements.
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Datamata Studios
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Comprehensive hiring analysis for Q3 2026: 11,161 listings, 208 companies, salary data and skill movements.
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Q3 2026 tech hiring report: 11,161 job listings analysed across 208 companies. Skill demand rankings, salary data and quarter-over-quarter trends.
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11,161 listings analysed · 208 companies · July 01 – September 30, 2026
Q3 2026 tech hiring spans 11,161 active listings across 208 companies, with Software Engineering and Data & Analytics roles driving the most significant skill shifts quarter-over-quarter. Angular led all risers at +4.4 percentage points in Software Engineering, followed by Databricks at +2.9 percentage points and Terraform at +2.7 percentage points, while Tableau posted a +2.2 percentage points gain in Data & Analytics — signalling growing employer demand for infrastructure tooling and visualisation skills. On the decline, Stakeholder Management dropped -44.4 percentage points, AWS fell -40.0 percentage points and Kubernetes contracted -35.1 percentage points, suggesting companies are actively reprioritising their hiring criteria away from cloud orchestration generalism toward specialised, tool-specific expertise.
Key movements this quarter:
Demand is spread across 6 categories, with 4,385 listings in the largest segment. Here is how each category breaks down.
2,644 active listings
| Rank | Skill | Demand | QoQ Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | SQL | 14.5% | -26.1 percentage points |
| 2 | Stakeholder Mgmt | 8.4% | -28.2 percentage points |
| 3 | Statistical Analysis | 4.7% | -6.0 percentage points |
| 4 | AWS | 4.7% | -21.0 percentage points |
| 5 | Spark | 4.5% | -8.9 percentage points |
4,385 active listings
| Rank | Skill | Demand | QoQ Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Python | 14.0% | -6.0 percentage points |
| 2 | AWS | 13.5% | -19.5 percentage points |
| 3 | React | 10.0% | -3.9 percentage points |
| 4 | Stakeholder Mgmt | 9.9% | -15.4 percentage points |
| 5 | SQL | 9.9% | -11.4 percentage points |
928 active listings
| Rank | Skill | Demand | QoQ Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Stakeholder Mgmt | 31.4% | -44.4 percentage points |
| 2 | A/b Testing | 10.2% | -10.5 percentage points |
| 3 | SQL | 9.3% | -4.8 percentage points |
| 4 | Prototyping | 8.4% | -6.9 percentage points |
| 5 | User Research | 6.4% | -7.9 percentage points |
1,322 active listings
| Rank | Skill | Demand | QoQ Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | AWS | 18.1% | -28.5 percentage points |
| 2 | Azure | 14.1% | -11.6 percentage points |
| 3 | CI/CD | 14.0% | -21.8 percentage points |
| 4 | Kubernetes | 12.2% | -35.1 percentage points |
| 5 | Docker | 6.7% | -21.0 percentage points |
723 active listings
| Rank | Skill | Demand | QoQ Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Incident Response | 9.3% | -14.9 percentage points |
| 2 | Python | 9.1% | -30.7 percentage points |
| 3 | Siem | 7.7% | -10.3 percentage points |
| 4 | GCP | 6.5% | -17.1 percentage points |
| 5 | Stakeholder Mgmt | 6.1% | -34.9 percentage points |
1,159 active listings
| Rank | Skill | Demand | QoQ Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Machine Learning | 32.4% | -7.0 percentage points |
| 2 | Llms / Genai | 26.1% | -23.4 percentage points |
| 3 | Python | 15.0% | -21.6 percentage points |
| 4 | Pytorch | 7.9% | -13.2 percentage points |
| 5 | Stakeholder Mgmt | 7.2% | -27.6 percentage points |
Quarter-over-quarter skill demand shifts highlight where the market is heading. The tables below rank skills by the size of their movement.
| Rank | Skill | Change | Current Demand | Category |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Angular | +4.4 percentage points | 4.4% | Software Engineering |
| 2 | Databricks | +2.9 percentage points | 2.9% | Software Engineering |
| 3 | Terraform | +2.7 percentage points | 2.7% | Software Engineering |
| 4 | Tableau | +2.2 percentage points | 2.2% | Data & Analytics |
| 5 | C# | +2.0 percentage points | 3.5% | Software Engineering |
| 6 | Datadog | +1.7 percentage points | 1.7% | Software Engineering |
| 7 | Scikit Learn | +1.7 percentage points | 1.7% | AI & Machine Learning |
| 8 | Soc 2 | +1.4 percentage points | 1.4% | Security |
| 9 | Fivetran | +1.0 percentage point | 1.0% | DevOps & Infrastructure |
| 10 | Rag | +0.9 percentage points | 1.6% | Product & Design |
| Rank | Skill | Change | Current Demand | Category |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Stakeholder Mgmt | -44.4 percentage points | 31.4% | Product & Design |
| 2 | AWS | -40.0 percentage points | 4.4% | Product & Design |
| 3 | Kubernetes | -35.1 percentage points | 12.2% | DevOps & Infrastructure |
| 4 | Stakeholder Mgmt | -34.9 percentage points | 6.1% | Security |
| 5 | Excel | -33.1 percentage points | 1.1% | Security |
| Skill | Demand | QoQ Change | Category |
|---|---|---|---|
| Angular | 4.4% | +4.4 percentage points | Software Engineering |
Compensation data drawn from listings with published salary bands. Figures show the interquartile range and median for each category.
| Category | IQR Range | Median | Sample Size |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data & Analytics | $94,141 – $157,180 | $126,859 | 200 listings |
| Software Engineering | $115,000 – $205,000 | $159,770 | 200 listings |
| Product & Design | $100,874 – $192,503 | $139,788 | 200 listings |
| DevOps & Infrastructure | $78,103 – $152,000 | $111,697 | 200 listings |
| Security | $72,629 – $161,200 | $122,474 | 200 listings |
| AI & Machine Learning | $119,255 – $211,000 | $156,631 | 200 listings |
This report aggregates daily snapshots from Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby postings. We classify roles by category, extract skills from listing text and compute demand as percentage share of active listings.
The top skills this quarter include Angular, Databricks, Terraform based on demand share across 11,161 active listings.
Salary medians range across categories, with published compensation data drawn from listings across 208 companies in Q3 2026.
Across 6 tracked categories, the highest volume comes from Software Engineering roles.
Published July 01, 2026. Data refreshed daily.
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