The state of software engineer hiring

After two years of slower demand for software engineers, leaders are looking ahead to brighter days. Optimism amongst engineering leaders and business leaders suggests that hiring may be nearing an inflection point as hiring targets for the next year are rising.

The increase in job openings is coming from tech companies where hiring targets grew 28% year over year in the US and 32% in India. This is a shift from recent years when enterprise organizations undergoing digital transformation had been picking up some of the slack in the labor market amidst large-scale tech industry layoffs and hiring freezes.

Improving productivity and confidence

Over the past two years we’ve seen an increased importance on hiring consistency and improving the quality of hires. This is evident in both industry sentiment and Karat’s talent benchmarks which showed a 12% year-over-year increase in the average technical interview score required to get an offer. This focus on quality and implementation of new productivity technologies like AI has boosted the overall satisfaction with engineering performance and improved confidence.

Priority SWE roles

In-demand AI skills

About the survey

This year’s Tech Hiring Trends report features insights from 430 software engineering leaders who are responsible for hiring and building software organizations in the United States or India.

Tech hiring best practices

48% of engineering leaders we surveyed were both very satisfied with the performance of their engineers and very confident in reaching their hiring targets. We broke out this group as 2024’s top-performing cohort of engineering leaders and looked at how they differentiated themselves from their lower-performing peers in areas like hiring speed, pass through rates, the use of contractors, and AI. Download out the full 2024 Hiring Trends report to learn more.