Breaking Down November 2024 Software Hiring Trends
Thousands of software jobs are posted every month, and we collect most of them (here’s how).
Out of curiosity, I decided to run some data analysis on all the jobs posted in November (about 18,000).
I aimed to find what are the trending and highly paid skills in the industry, among other things.
If you’re curious about industry trends, keep reading.
Disclaimer: this is not an exhaustive list of the software industry. But the 18k+ jobs from the last month we analyzed are a large sample size of the 184k total tech jobs, so the data trends we found are significant.
What were the most posted job types?
First, let’s see how many jobs were posted for each job type.
As you can see, Backend (25.8%) and DevOps (13.8%) were the most requested jobs in November.
Of the backend jobs, the most common skills required were (in order): Python, AWS, SQL, Java, Kubernetes.
And of the DevOps jobs, the most common skills required were (in order): Python, Kubernetes, AWS, DevOps, Docker.
As we’ll see later, if you’re just looking to land a software job. Python, AWS, and Kubernetes are a good place to start.
How much does each job type pay?
Let’s talk money. Let’s see which jobs are paying the most.
Blockchain and AI/ML are leading the way, both an average of about $185k.
🚨 However, before you go jumping on the hype train, let’s map pay vs number of jobs posted.
Ah, as you can see Blockchain and AI/ML pay well. But the tradeoff is there are less of those jobs. So the seats are harder to get, but more lucrative when you do.
Backend jobs on the other hand have a lot of open positions, but slightly lower average pay.
(See here about how we classify the different job types.)
Can it be remote?
Now let’s see which jobs have the most remote opportunities:
Not surprising Backend has the most remote opportunities, since they have the most in total.
But (to me) it’s surprising Embedded was a close second, considering they have about half has many listings.
But let’s see the % of jobs that are remote.
This shows, if you land one of these jobs, the chances that you’ll be able to work from anywhere.
So it looks like embedded engineers are most likely working in their pajamas.
These are jobs like “Embedded Linux”, “Consumer Hardware”, “Kernel Developer”, etc.
What skills are getting paid?
Now let’s dig into the skills.
Let’s see what the top 20 highest paid skills were:
The industry is highly valuing blockchain and AI skillsets at the moment (and ... Hadoop, a niche data software tool).
🚨 But once again this doesn’t tell the whole story!
Let’s map the job pay to the total number of jobs posted.
As you can see some of the highest paying skills are the least posted.
So it’s a tradeoff once again. Less availability, but more 💰 if you get hired.
What were the most mentioned skills?
Lastly, as promised, let’s see what the most common skills mentioned across all the job postings were.
Python led the way with 7,899 mentions (46% all the jobs from November!).
It makes sense, since Python is a common language among the most popular job types like Backend and DevOps (as well as AI/ML).
If you’re looking for a dev job, Python gives you the highest chances of getting hired.
Conclusion
Ultimately, what job type and skills you choose to pursue is up to you.
But it’s a good idea to stay informed about industry trends so you make smart career decisions.
If you enjoyed this, we post regular industry stats in our newsletter. You can subscribe here for free.
And our Pro users also get in-depth insights for every skill and job type we collect (among other features like instant job notifications).To get Pro access go here.
What did you think of our research? I’d love to hear your thoughts. You can message me on twitter.
Happy hacking.
