I scraped 39,230 SWE job postings across 4,742 US companies in 2026 to understand what the market actually looks like.

Some clear patterns stood out:

1. Hiring is extremely concentrated.

The top 10 companies account for most job postings. The majority of companies only have 5–10 open SE roles at any given time, meaning most of the market is relatively stagnant while a few players drive most hiring activity.

2. Salary distribution is uneven:

Junior: $99K

Mid: $107K

Senior: $140K

Lead: $121K (notably lower than Senior, suggesting title inflation more than real seniority)

Staff: $177K

Director: $200K+

Senior roles are where compensation meaningfully increases, while Junior and Mid levels remain compressed.

3. AI/LLM is now embedded in ~50% of all Software Engineer job descriptions — not just AI roles. This means candidates without any AI exposure risk being filtered out before a human even reviews their resume.

4. Only 14% of roles are explicitly remote. Most are onsite or unspecified (which usually implies onsite), showing that the remote-heavy era has largely reversed.

5. Around 80% of job postings do not specify seniority level. This creates ambiguity where “Software Engineer” could mean anything from junior to staff, making it harder for candidates to target applications accurately.