Top-paying tech companies are posting 20% more software engineering jobs than a year ago, according to TrueUp data tracking open roles at high-compensation employers. The US and UK markets are up. Germany and France are down. AI engineering demand is outpacing standard software engineering hiring across most major companies, with Apple, Google, and TikTok leading AI role postings. Meta ran a two-year hiring spree, then cut last week. Apple, Amazon, and IBM now hold the top 3 spots by total engineering headcount listings.
The data comes from two months of original research by analyst Jessica Salmon, cross-referenced with TrueUp job-scan data and Workforce.ai, which tracks over 1 million job changes and 300 million employment validations monthly. The paradox from 2025 still needs answering: job seekers struggled to get responses while hiring managers said hiring was hard. This report has the numbers to test whether that paradox persists or shifted.
The section worth reading in full is the AI engineering breakdown. Many larger tech companies show 50 to 100 percent more AI engineering listings year over year, and the fastest-growing hiring appears concentrated in fintech, observability, and security. The report stops short of concluding that AI engineering is replacing software engineering hiring, but it asks directly whether AI basics are becoming a baseline requirement for any engineering candidate. That question has no clean answer yet, which is exactly why you should read the full piece.
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