‘AI code apocalypse’ hasn’t hit engineers as hard as the industry may think

Turns out, software engineers may not have got the short end of the stick in the “AI code apocalypse.”

According to tech venture capital firm SignalFire’s 2026 State of Talent Report, software engineering was one of the jobs least impacted by AI automation last year, especially when compared to professions such as marketing and design.

While overall hiring at large tech companies (including Alphabet, Meta, Apple, Amazon, and others) has fallen 25% since 2019, engineering hiring only decreased 11% during the same period. The researchers also found that software engineering was the most sought-after role at large tech companies, beating all other hiring.

Methodology. In its report, SignalFire examined data from its proprietary BeaconAI platform, which tracks more than 80 million organizations, and analyzed “hiring trends, geographic movements, and more.” SignalFire Head of Research Asher Bantock told IT Brew in an email via Brent Shelton that the report focuses on hiring trends from 2019 and onward because SignalFire believed it served as a baseline for the last “typical” period in tech hiring before the pandemic, when hiring ramped up across both large tech companies and startups.

Contrary to popular belief. The findings come as the software engineering field wrestles with job displacement worries. Last year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg predicted that companies would begin using AI as a “midlevel engineer.” Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has said that the company would pause hiring engineers because of productivity gains from AI.

Bantock told IT Brew the engineering field has persevered thanks to the Jevons paradox, an economic theory that describes when demand and consumption of a resource generally go up when a resource becomes more efficient to use. (In this case, software development is the resource that becomes easier to produce, which, in turn, fuels companies to utilize more of it.)

“When an engineer becomes much more productive, there is just more stuff for them to do. There’s an endless supply of backlog for them to move on to in the event that they’re able to do more with their time,” Bantock said. “And I think that idea applies less in other functions than engineering.”

Other takeaways. Software engineering hasn’t gotten a completely happy ending amidst the AI revolution. SignalFire said engineering roles “centered on specific platforms or parts of the stack are in relative decline.” For example, the share of front-end engineers fell about 25% between Q1 2022 and Q1 2026, as GenAI makes it easier for backend generalists to produce personalized user interfaces.

Entry-level roles have also taken a hit at large tech companies, with hiring of new grads falling 65% since 2019. New grads are, however, being resourceful. SignalFire said graduates from the top 20 US computer science programs are twice as likely to be founders in 2025 compared to 2022.

“The onus is on new grads to find ways to get themselves experienced that are outside the traditional interns or entry-level track, and we’re seeing people get increasingly resourceful with that,” Bantock said.