What's next for software developers, 2027-2029: where the openings will be

Part of a 14-post series on IT jobs in the AI era. Start with the overview: IT job market 2022 to 2026: openings fell, jobs held.

Software developer job postings in the US hit their low in May 2025 and rose 19% in the year to September 2026, to 77% of their February 2020 level. Germany's fell 16% over the same twelve months to 49, and made a new low in October 2026 [Indeed Hiring Lab via FRED, 2026]. The US employed 1,687,890 software developers in May 2025, 10% more than in May 2022 [BLS OEWS, 2025]. And 58.6% of Hacker News software hiring posts mentioned AI in 2026, against 15.7% in 2022 [Hacker News "Who is hiring", 2022-2026]. The job survived, openings are recovering in the US but not yet in Germany, and most ads now assume you work with AI.

The trend lines, carried forward

Indeed software development postings (February 2020 = 100) with the last twelve months' change carried forward and the forecast ranges from the ai-era-it-jobs report. Source: FRED; ai-era-it-jobs report, section 13.

The forecasts below come from section 13 of the ai-era-it-jobs report. Each one has a confidence level and a number that will tell us by mid-2027 whether it is right.

• The US software index ends 2027 between 80 and 95 (medium confidence). Carrying the last twelve months forward gives 96; the range sits below that because I do not expect a 19% yearly pace to hold. A June 2027 reading of 78 or more confirms; below 70 falsifies.
• The German index stays below 55 all through 2027 (medium-high), bottoms by end-2028 and stands between 50 and 70 at end-2029 (low-medium). Carried forward, it would reach 39 by December 2027.
• UK software postings, the only UK category up year on year (+5%), stay above their September 2026 level of 62 (medium-high).
• US software developers number 1.72 to 1.85 million in May 2029 (medium). The 2022-25 growth rate would give 1.92 million and the BLS projection 1.75 million; growth slowed to 2% in 2024-25.
• AI is mentioned in at least 65% of Hacker News software posts in 2027 (high) and in more than 80% by 2029 (medium-high). "AI engineer" stops gaining share as a separate title and folds back into "software engineer" (medium-low).
• The gap for 22-25-year-olds in AI-exposed occupations stays at 15% or more through 2029, and new graduates stay under 10% of Big Tech engineering hires (medium).

Five places the openings will be

Occupations a developer can move into: US employment and real pay change, 2022-2025, coloured by the scorecard's outlook score. Source: BLS OEWS.

1. AI engineering at the companies that build with models. On company job pages, AI engineer titles went from 4 in 9,720 pages (October 2022 to March 2023) to 223 in 42,994 pages in 2026, at 119 companies [company job pages, 2022-2026]. The premium rises with seniority: AI-focused engineers earn 6.2% more than their peers at entry level and 18.7% more at staff level [Levels.fyi, 2025]. The report expects the senior premium to stay above 15% and the entry premium to fall toward zero (medium).
2. The forward-deployed engineer. In 2022-23 the seven forward-deployed engineer job pages were all at Palantir. In 2026 there were 229 at 83 companies, 28 of them in the UK [company job pages, 2022-2026]. Postings that disclose pay advertise a median of $173,816 [Bloomberry, 2025]. If you have stood in front of a customer, this is the most direct route from developer to a growing title.
3. A move into security or data. In the chart above, only two neighbouring occupations both grew and beat inflation from 2022 to 2025: information security analysts (+16.5% employment, +4.8% real pay) and data scientists (+64.4%, +5.5%) [BLS OEWS, 2025]. "AI security engineer" postings rose 268% in a year to September 2026 [CyberSN via ClearanceJobs, 2026]. Software developers themselves grew 10% but lost 2.9% in real pay.
4. The US first, then the UK and the Netherlands. The report expects US software postings to stay above Germany's and France's every month through 2029 (medium). Of the three European markets in our Indeed data, the UK is the only one where software postings are rising, and the Netherlands keeps the highest information-and-communication vacancy rate in our EU set (6.5% to 4.8%, forecast at or above 4.0% through mid-2027, medium) [Eurostat, 2026]. Poland is a senior and remote market: half of Polish developers in the 2026 survey work fully remote, the highest of the four countries we track, and the ICT workforce grew 21% to 778,800 between 2022 and 2025 [Stack Overflow survey, 2026; Eurostat, 2026]. Remote overall is shrinking, from 83% of Hacker News software posts in 2022 to 52% in 2026.
5. A permanent seat rather than a day rate. In the UK, programmers already in work gained 9% in real pay from 2022 to 2025, while the salaries offered in Hays's guides for 249 matched software title-and-region rows lost 8.9% [ONS ASHE, 2025; Hays, 2026]. A contract solutions architect's advertised day rate was £625 in 2024 and £625 in 2026, about a 6% real cut [ITJobsWatch, 2026]. In Poland, Hays's IT B2B hourly rates rose 12.8% but lost 10.7% to inflation [Hays Poland, 2025]. The report expects the UK split between employees and new offers to persist (medium).

Skills to add in the next 12 months

What software job pages ask for more and less. Source: ai-era-it-jobs study.

The non-AI skills that rose most in software job pages are about running systems in production. Reliability went from 10.8% to 30.1% of pages, observability from 4.0% to 17.9%, distributed systems from 12.1% to 20.8% and code review from 17.8% to 25.1% [company job pages, 2022-2026]. Ownership rose from 26.3% to 43.0%. On the AI side, the share of software job pages naming AI inside the requirements section went from 8.1% to 51.4%. The tools named most often in 2026 Hacker News software posts are Claude (76 posts, up from 32 in 2025), Cursor (38, from 16) and MCP (23, from 5) [Hacker News "Who is hiring", 2025-2026].

What to stop investing in

JavaScript fell from 32.1% to 13.9% of software job pages, agile from 26.7% to 11.9% and HTML/CSS from 16.0% to 5.2% [company job pages, 2022-2026]. Developers still use these: 64.6% of professional developers in Stack Overflow's 2026 survey use JavaScript [Stack Overflow survey, 2026]. Employers stopped writing them down because they assume them, and because there are fewer front-end openings. Keep the skill and stop leading your CV with it. The same goes for "web3", which fell from 9.3% to 3.1%.

Three numbers to watch in 2027

• The US software postings index in June 2027: 78 or more confirms the recovery, and below 70 says it stalled.
• The first month German software postings rise year on year. Until that happens, plan on the US and the UK for new openings.
• BLS employment for May 2026, published in spring 2027. A figure of 1.70 million or more supports the slow-growth path; below 1.66 million means weak openings have started to pull employment down.

A 90-day plan

In the first month, pick one target from the five above and rewrite your CV to lead with what the ads now ask for: something you ran in production, its reliability and what you owned. In the second month, ship one project that shows review as well as building: tests, an evaluation of the AI parts, monitoring, and a short incident write-up. In the third month, apply where the openings are growing, US-based remote roles, the UK and the Netherlands, and go through people rather than inbound forms. Experienced engineers in The Pragmatic Engineer's 2026 interviews said cold applications rarely led anywhere and referrals decided [The Pragmatic Engineer, 2026].

Sources

1. Indeed Hiring Lab via FRED, software development postings indexes IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE, IHLIDXGBTPSOFTDEVE, IHLIDXDETPSOFTDEVE (February 2020 = 100), data to 2026-10-16. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/IHLIDXUSTPSOFTDEVE
2. The ai-era-it-jobs report, section 13 (forecasts) and section 14, 2026-10-21.
3. US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2022 and May 2025 national files, deflated by CPI-U via FRED. https://www.bls.gov/oes/; https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCSL
4. Hacker News "Ask HN: Who is hiring?" threads, 2022-2026, software development chapter sample. https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/
5. Company job pages on Greenhouse, Lever and Ashby, October 2022-March 2023 vs May-October 2026.
6. Levels.fyi, Alina Kolesnikova, "AI Engineer Compensation Trends Q3 2025", 2025-07-17. https://www.levels.fyi/blog/ai-engineer-compensation-trends-q3-2025.html
7. Bloomberry, "I analyzed 1,000 forward deployed engineer jobs", 2025-11-18. https://bloomberry.com/blog/i-analyzed-1000-forward-deployed-engineer-jobs-what-i-learned/
8. ClearanceJobs (P. Suciu), "Cybersecurity hiring hits a four-year low as AI skills gain ground", citing CyberSN, 2026-10-20. https://news.clearancejobs.com/2026/10/20/cybersecurity-hiring-hits-a-four-year-low-as-ai-skills-gain-ground/
9. Eurostat, job vacancy rate for information and communication (jvs_q_nace2) and ICT specialists in employment (isoc_sks_itspt). https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/isoc_sks_itspt/
10. Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2022-2026, public microdata; 2026 results post, 2026-10-06. https://survey.stackoverflow.co/; https://stackoverflow.blog/2026/10/06/the-results-of-the-2026-developer-survey-are-here/
11. Office for National Statistics, Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, Table 14, 2022-2025, deflated by ONS CPI (D7BT). https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours
12. Hays UK salary guides 2023-2026 and Hays Poland salary guides 2022-2025 (matched-title comparison in ai-era-it-jobs report, section 8-9).
13. ITJobsWatch, Solutions Architect contract trends, UK, six months to 20 October 2026. https://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/contracts/uk/solutions%20architect.do
14. Gergely Orosz, The Pragmatic Engineer, "Tech jobs market in 2026, part 3: hiring", 2026-07-07. https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/tech-jobs-market-in-2026-part-3-hiring