Software Engineer Trends in 2024

Methodology

This report is based on proprietary data gathered and analyzed by Hired’s data science teams. For these report articles, Hired examined software engineering candidate interview requests (IVR) and salary data from January 2022 through December 2023 inclusive. The data included reflects over 65,000 candidates and 330,000 interview requests between companies and software engineers on Hired during this time period. A minimum of 500 interview requests, in a given market, were required for salary-related data to be valid and included in the report. 

Of note, for the sections on the demand for certain software engineering roles and skills, candidates can have multiple subroles as well as several skills associated with their candidate profile (e.g., a candidate with a primary role of software engineer can have both NLP engineer and machine learning engineer subroles on their profile). Positions can also have multiple subroles. Candidates can have multiple skills associated with their candidate profile (Java, C, C++, etc.) All salaries indicated reflect an employer’s salary at the time of the interview request. 

Employer sizes are denoted as follows: 

eSMB = 1-75 employees, SMB = 76-300, MM = 301-1000, ENT = 1001+

Hired is a two-sided marketplace that helps high-quality, active jobseekers in tech and sales find new roles while helping employers find the right candidates efficiently. Check out the blog What is Hired.com and About Hired for more.

Overview from Hired’s CEO

As we reflected on 2022 and the data, so many images came to mind – a rollercoaster, a pendulum, a weathervane, a two-sided coin. It’s been a challenging time for the tech industry. Despite this, the tech industry unemployment rate continues to improve, dropping from 1.8% in December to 1.5% in January. This rate suggests many laid-off workers were quickly reabsorbed into the workforce and that several of the layoffs in the tech sector are non-technical workers, such as sales, marketing, or support roles.

We believe virtually every company, at this point, is a tech company. You may be in healthcare, manufacturing, or hospitality, but as part of this global economy, you have a tech team. We’re faced with a lot of big transitions, but we know software engineers are resilient, adaptable and creative problem-solvers. Software engineering is an incredible career choice, providing opportunities to touch a multitude of industries and solve big issues.

In fact, U.S. News & World Report recently named it #1 in their list of 100 Top Jobs. We create this report every year to help talent professionals and software engineers understand the hiring climate, as well as what’s top of mind for employers and engineers. It’s part of our vision to make hiring more equitable, efficient, and transparent for all. We’re here to support both employers and jobseekers every step of the way.

It’s been a challenging year for organisations across the United Kingdom. 2022 began with the struggle to find and hire talent. As the year went on, the energy crisis worsened, national leadership saw significant turnover, and economic policies shifted. Many companies pulled back on scaling teams and even laid off workers they’d hired only months before.

Despite these obstacles, signs indicate global remote hiring remains confident in Europe, with employers especially interested in experienced talent with specialised skill sets. At Hired, we aspire to make hiring as efficient, equitable, and transparent as possible, for the best experience for all parties. Whether backfilling roles or advancing initiatives, we help companies of all sizes fill tech and sales roles with unbiased insights, diversity, equity & inclusion (DEI) tools, skills assessments, and dedicated Customer Success managers.

In this report, we’ve specifically studied software engineers on the Hired marketplace to identify the top issues and trends. This includes looking at the most in-demand skills and roles, salaries, and shifts to remote hiring. We provide more details in the Methodology section, but this is based on more than 76K interview requests (IVRs) between employers and (more than 9K) candidates on the Hired marketplace.

We’ve supplemented the platform data with survey responses from more than 1300 software engineers and 120 talent professionals and Hiring managers. We aim to provide organisations with takeaways to better attract and retain talent and insights to help software engineers succeed in their careers.

Overview from Hired’s CEO

Amid the ongoing tech talent shortage and record-high demands from companies eager to fill open roles, software engineers on Hired received more than twice the amount of interview requests on average in 2021 than they did in 2020. This competitive hiring market continues to put pressure on companies to offer compelling salaries and benefits and extend their talent search to hire remote software engineers outside of big tech hubs, expanding and distributing teams globally. For software engineers, upskilling is key to thrive in this global job market and the more specialized their skill set, the higher the demand and salary.

Josh Brenner, CEO of Hired

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