AI isn’t gutting software engineering: new data
CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES — Engineering roles have proven the most resilient job category in the tech sector — declining just 11% from 2019 levels in a period when overall tech hiring fell 25%, according to SignalFire’s 2026 State of Talent Report.
Engineers are a larger share of tech hires today than before AI arrived
“What we’re seeing on the ground is a little inconsistent with that,” said Asher Bantock, Head of Research at SignalFire, referring to predictions that AI would displace software engineers.
The report — which tracked careers of millions of workers across more than 80 million companies — found that engineers comprised 55% of new hires at major tech companies in 2025, up from 46% in 2019.
The data directly contradicts the AI-will-replace-engineers narrative: early-stage startups hired 7% more engineers in 2025 than in 2019, suggesting that AI is increasing engineering demand at earlier stages of company growth rather than reducing it.
The AI companies themselves are hiring more engineers than ever
“Software engineers are busier than ever” since implementing agentic AI, said Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia.
“There’s at least no larger material difference in unemployment rates” between workers in AI-exposed roles and those in non-AI-exposed roles, said Peter McCrory, Head of Economics at Anthropic — an observation that challenges the premise that proximity to AI correlates with higher job risk.
The SignalFire report examined hiring data rather than layoff announcements — a methodological distinction that captures net employment trends rather than headline-grabbing cuts.
Engineers making up 55% of new hires at major tech companies is the highest share on record for the category, suggesting that the more AI is deployed, the more human engineers are needed to build, maintain, and direct it.
SignalFire tracked careers across more than 80 million companies to produce the report — a dataset large enough to surface structural hiring trends that headline layoff counts, which tend to overrepresent highly visible large-company cuts, regularly obscure.
For BPO and offshore staffing providers, the engineering resilience data is a direct opportunity signal. The sustained demand for engineering talent — driven by AI adoption rather than constrained by it — positions offshore tech delivery as a growth category, not a threatened one.
Providers that expand technical capacity in software engineering, AI tooling, and systems integration will be serving a market that is demonstrably growing faster than the AI-will-replace-everyone narrative suggests.
