October 2026
Jobs ReportReleased November 2026
How are tech jobs faring in the hiring market?
Tech job postings increased 4% month-over-month in October, following a 9% increase in September. Year-over-year, postings are up 20% compared to October 2025.
AI and machine learning tech postings grew 91% year-over-year (October 2026 vs. October 2025), more than four times the 20% growth rate for tech postings overall.
Where are tech job postings concentrated?
Insurance and Software led month-over-month industry growth in October, with tech job postings up more than 30%. Healthcare (+15%), Manufacturing (+9%), and Consulting and Aerospace/defense (both +8%) also grew month-over-month.
Year-over-year, Software, Aerospace/defense, and Manufacturing were all at or above 50% growth.
The Insurance gain lines up with several titles and skills discussed below. Industry research describes insurers working to modernize legacy core systems while competing for cloud, data, AI, and cybersecurity talent, which fits this month’s growth in Mainframe Systems Programmers and finance-oriented skills such as Consolidation and Reconciliation.
Regional Hiring Patterns
Seven of the top 10 states by tech hiring volume grew month-over-month in October, led by New Jersey (+67%), Maryland (+36%), and Illinois (+32%). Year-over-year, all 10 grew, led by Maryland (+131%) and New Jersey (+69%).
New Jersey, New York, and Illinois are financial and trading hubs, which aligns with this month’s growth in Low Latency, Order Management Systems, and FinTech skills.
Among metros, New York-Newark-Jersey City (+48%), Chicago (+46%), Baltimore (+30%), and Washington DC (+14%) grew month-over-month. The other six declined, including San Jose (-12%), Los Angeles (-11%), and Boston (-9%), where October brought layoff announcements at eBay, Netflix, and HubSpot.
Year-over-year, Baltimore (+111%) led metro growth, while San Jose (-4%) and Atlanta (-9%) declined.
Who are companies hiring right now?
Job titles with MoM growth above 150% (concentrated across AI and ML operations, senior engineering and infrastructure, and enterprise systems roles): Lead Infrastructure Engineers, AI Trainers, Staff Applications Engineers, Machine Learning Data Engineers, Distinguished Engineers, Mainframe Systems Programmers, Workday Managers, Salesforce Business Analysts, Machine Learning Operations Engineers, IAM Engineers, Network Infrastructure Managers, GIS Analysts, SQL Database Administrators.
Three groups stand out. AI Trainers, Machine Learning Data Engineers, and Machine Learning Operations Engineers support training and running AI models. Lead, Staff, and Distinguished Engineer titles point to demand for senior technical leadership. Mainframe Systems Programmers, SQL Database Administrators, Workday Managers, and Salesforce Business Analysts work on the core business systems that AI and data projects connect to.
Month-over-month skills growth
Skills with 36%+ MoM growth were led by Complex Problem Solving (72%) and Applications of Artificial Intelligence (55%).
Low Latency, Order Management Systems, Redis, Elasticsearch, and FinTech all grew, a group common in trading and real-time transaction systems. Consolidation, a finance skill for combining results across business units, fits the rise in Workday Managers and Insurance hiring. Postman API Platform and Security Testing match the IAM Engineer title above.
Year-over-year skills growth (200%+)
Claude AI and GitHub Copilot show employers naming specific AI coding tools in their requirements. Their growth sits alongside Technical Debt, Maintainability, Design Reviews, Software Technical Review, and Defect Management, which suggests employers want engineers who can review and maintain AI-assisted code.
Agentic AI, AI Agents, Retrieval Augmented Generation, and Responsible AI continue a cluster seen in recent months’ reports. Telemetry, Traceability, and Exception Handling relate to monitoring and troubleshooting systems once they are in production, while AI Adoption, Enterprise Integration, and Engineering Practices point to the work of moving AI from pilots into everyday use.
Report Methodology
To present the insights in this report, Dice used job posting data provided by Dice’s partner, Lightcast, which has a database of more than 3 billion current and historical job postings worldwide. Dice pulled data on November 3, 2026 and analyzed over 7 million tech job postings in the U.S. to gather our specific dataset, which we then filtered for “Information Technology” jobs that fall under “Full Time,” “Part Time” and “Flexible Hours.”
We gathered the list of top employers in the “Industry Analysis” section by using the above criteria, with an additional filter for job postings that only derive from employer sites. This report is based entirely on real-time job posting data and is independent of Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) employment reports.
This Dice report provides timely labor market insights derived directly from employer hiring activity rather than survey-based employment statistics. The information in this report is a snapshot of tech job posting data as of November 3, 2026, and backward revisions to prior month’s data may occur from the sources used in this report.
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