The technology job market remains turbulent in 2026, but employers are still hiring workers with the right technical skills. More than 125,800 tech employees across 266 companies have been laid off this year, already surpassing the approximately 122,600 layoffs recorded in 2025. Growing investment in artificial intelligence and machine learning is a major factor behind these workforce adjustments, tells Design News.
An Oxylabs analysis of roughly 850,000 U.S. technology job postings published between January 2025 and March 2026 shows that cloud computing and infrastructure skills dominate employer requirements. Amazon Web Services appeared in 30% of postings, followed by Microsoft Azure at 24% and Git at 21%. Excel, Google Cloud Platform, Kubernetes, Docker, Power BI, Terraform, and Tableau completed the 10 most requested skills.
Nearly 42% of postings required experience with at least one major cloud platform. AWS and Azure appeared together in 15% of job descriptions. Overall, cloud platforms represented 47% of tool mentions, compared with 30% for DevOps tools and 18% for business intelligence technologies.
Hiring activity also accelerated during the first quarter of 2026, which accounted for 39% of all postings analyzed and represented 3.7 times the activity recorded during the same period in 2025. Software engineering remained the largest employment category at 38%, despite concerns about AI replacing software jobs. Data science and AI/ML and technology and engineering management each represented 14%, while DevOps and cloud positions accounted for 12%.
Geographically, California generated the largest share of postings, followed by Texas and New York. Virginia stood out with nearly three times the national average of technology jobs per capita, driven largely by its concentration of data centers.
The findings indicate that employers continue to prioritize practical expertise in cloud platforms, infrastructure, DevOps, and data tools even as AI reshapes technology employment.
