🎵 Tech Jobs Wrapped 2025: The Year in Hiring Data
Your personalized hiring recap is here. Based on 432,944 real job postings.
We analyzed every single tech job posting from 1,092 established tech companies throughout 2025. No surveys. No estimates. Just cold, hard data.
Here's what we found—and some of it will shock you.
🚨 The Headlines Nobody's Talking About
"Only 1 in 6 tech jobs are entry-level."
Just 15-17% of all postings are for juniors. Companies want experienced hires—new grads are fighting over scraps.
"79% of tech jobs now require office presence."
Remote work isn't dead—it's on life support. Only 14% of roles are fully remote.
"November hiring crashed 31% in a single month."
The largest drop of 2025. Holiday slowdown or something worse?
"Only 4% of tech jobs are actually AI/ML roles."
Despite the hype, pure AI/ML roles (ML Engineer, AI Engineer, Research Scientist) are just 3.6% of all postings. Add Data roles and you get 7%—but that includes Data Analysts and BI Engineers.
"Sales roles are growing faster than engineering."
Sales & Growth (63K jobs) is catching up to Software Engineering (97K). Tech companies are becoming sales machines.
📊 The Big Numbers
| Metric | 2025 Total |
|---|---|
| Job Postings Analyzed | 432,944 |
| Companies Tracked | 1,092 |
| Active Jobs (Dec 2025) | 215,967 |
| Data Coverage | Jan 1 - Dec 22, 2025 |
📉 The Hiring Slowdown Nobody Talked About
Monthly Job Postings Throughout 2025
Jan ████████████████████████████████████████ 39,811
Feb ███████████████████████████████████████ 38,591 (-3%)
Mar ████████████████████████████████████████████ 43,555 (+13%)
Apr █████████████████████████████████████████ 40,723 (-6%)
May ██████████████████████████████████████ 37,422 (-8%)
Jun ██████████████████████████████████████ 37,340 (-0.2%)
Jul ███████████████████████████████████████ 39,022 (+5%)
Aug ████████████████████████████████████ 35,433 (-9%)
Sep ██████████████████████████████████ 33,980 (-4%)
Oct ███████████████████████████████████████ 38,428 (+13%)
Nov ███████████████████████████ 26,440 (-31%) ⚠️
Dec █████████████████████ 22,199 (-16%)
Key Insight: Hiring crashed 31% in November—the largest single-month drop of the year. Holiday slowdown or a signal of things to come?
🏢 Where The Jobs Are: Sector Breakdown
Top 10 Sectors by Job Volume
| Rank | Sector | Jobs | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | B2B | 224,924 | 17% |
| 2 | B2C | 180,753 | 13% |
| 3 | eCommerce | 144,784 | 11% |
| 4 | Marketplace | 133,756 | 10% |
| 5 | Cloud Computing | 127,224 | 9% |
| 6 | SaaS | 80,592 | 6% |
| 7 | Enterprise | 29,725 | 2% |
| 8 | Telecommunications | 20,601 | 2% |
| 9 | Hardware | 19,281 | 1% |
| 10 | Fintech | 18,181 | 1% |
The story: B2B and B2C giants dominate, but SaaS companies punch above their weight with aggressive sales hiring.
🎯 The Roles Everyone Wanted
Job Categories in 2025 (Rolled Up)
| Category | Jobs | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Software Engineering | 97,155 | 22% 🔥 |
| Operations & Strategy | 67,768 | 16% |
| Sales & Growth | 63,659 | 15% |
| Data, AI & ML | 30,570 | 7% 🔥 |
| Finance & Legal | 25,545 | 6% |
| Other Technical | 18,546 | 4% |
| Product Management | 17,171 | 4% |
| Marketing & Brand | 14,168 | 3% |
| People Operations | 9,905 | 2% |
| Design & UX | 7,793 | 2% |
The story: Software Engineering dominates with 97K+ jobs—but that includes backend, frontend, DevOps, security, and more. Let's break it down.
Software Engineering Breakdown
| Role | Jobs | % of SWE |
|---|---|---|
| General Software Engineering | 33,570 | 35% |
| Solutions Engineer | 7,393 | 8% |
| Backend Engineer | 6,014 | 6% |
| Engineering Manager | 5,669 | 6% |
| Security Engineer | 5,573 | 6% |
| Full Stack Engineer | 3,982 | 4% |
| Cloud Engineer | 3,623 | 4% |
| QA Engineer | 3,513 | 4% |
| Frontend Engineer | 3,185 | 3% |
| Mobile Engineer | 3,130 | 3% |
Insight: "General Software Engineering" is the catch-all. Specialized roles (backend, frontend, security) are clearly defined.
Data, AI & ML Breakdown
| Role | Jobs | % of Data/AI |
|---|---|---|
| Machine Learning Engineer | 5,801 | 19% |
| Data Scientist | 4,478 | 15% |
| Data Analyst | 3,730 | 12% |
| Data Engineer | 3,666 | 12% |
| Applied Scientist | 3,557 | 12% |
| AI Engineer | 2,423 | 8% |
| BI Engineer | 2,367 | 8% |
| Research Scientist | 1,970 | 6% |
Hot take: ML Engineer > Data Scientist in 2025. Production ML is more valued than research.
The AI Hype vs Reality
Let's separate pure AI/ML from traditional Data roles:
| Category | Roles | Jobs | % of All Tech |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pure AI/ML | ML Engineer, AI Engineer, Applied Scientist, Research Scientist, MLOps, NLP, CV | ~15,700 | 3.6% |
| Traditional Data | Data Analyst, Data Engineer, BI Engineer, Analytics Engineer | ~15,300 | 3.5% |
| Combined | All of the above | ~31,000 | 7% |
The reality: Despite every company claiming to be "AI-first," only 3.6% of actual job postings are for pure AI/ML roles. The other half of "Data/AI" jobs are traditional data roles that existed long before ChatGPT.
💻 The Skills That Actually Mattered
Top 15 Most-Requested Skills
| Skill | Mentions | Sector Dominance |
|---|---|---|
| Python | 27,308 | Everywhere |
| AWS | 18,378 | Cloud, Enterprise |
| Java | 13,755 | Fintech, Enterprise |
| Machine Learning | 10,998 | AI, Hardware |
| SQL | 9,061 | Data roles |
| C++ | 9,052 | Hardware, Systems |
| JavaScript | 7,890 | Frontend, Full-stack |
| Azure | 6,692 | Enterprise |
| Kubernetes | 6,426 | DevOps, Cloud |
| Salesforce | 5,962 | Sales, Enterprise |
| Google Ads | 5,859 | Marketing |
| Linux | 5,727 | Infrastructure |
| Google Analytics | 5,543 | Marketing |
| Data Analysis | 5,221 | Analytics |
| AI | 4,421 | Everywhere |
The winners: Python + AWS is the 2025 tech stack. If you only learn two things, learn those.
Skills by Sector
| Sector | Top Skills |
|---|---|
| SaaS | Python, ML, SEO, Google Ads, C++ |
| Fintech | Java, AWS, Kubernetes, Docker, Python |
| AI | Java, AWS, Python, Kubernetes, Docker |
| B2B | AWS, Python, Java, ML, SQL |
| Hardware | Python, ML, C++, C, Kubernetes |
| Enterprise | MongoDB, ML, Python, Terraform, JavaScript |
Pattern: Python appears in every sector. Java dominates finance-heavy industries.
🏠 The Remote Work Report Card
The Big Question: Is Remote Dead?
On-site ███████████████████████████████████████ 79%
Remote ██████ 14%
Hybrid ███ 7%
Verdict: Remote work isn't dead, but 79% of jobs require office presence. The dream has shrunk.
Remote Work Throughout 2025
| Month | Remote | Hybrid | On-site |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan | 15% | 7% | 79% |
| Feb | 14% | 6% | 80% |
| Mar | 14% | 6% | 80% |
| Apr | 14% | 6% | 80% |
| May | 13% | 7% | 80% |
| Jun | 12% | 6% | 82% |
| Jul | 13% | 9% | 78% |
| Aug | 12% | 7% | 81% |
| Sep | 13% | 9% | 78% |
| Oct | 12% | 8% | 80% |
| Nov | 17% | 10% | 73% |
| Dec | 15% | 9% | 76% |
Good news: Remote increased to 17% in November. Companies posting during the slowdown were more likely to offer remote.
Remote by Sector
| Sector | Remote % | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Enterprise | 36% | 🟢 Remote-friendly |
| Fintech | 30% | 🟢 Remote-friendly |
| AI | 30% | 🟢 Remote-friendly |
| SaaS | 22% | 🟡 Some options |
| B2B | 11% | 🔴 Mostly on-site |
| Cloud Computing | 5% | 🔴 On-site culture |
| Hardware | 0% | 🔴 Can't build chips from home |
Where to look: If you want remote, target Enterprise, Fintech, or AI companies.
👶 The Entry-Level Crisis
Seniority Distribution in 2025
Senior+ ██████████████████████████████████████████████ 46%
Mid-level █████████████████████████████████████ 37%
Entry/Junior █████████████████ 17%
The harsh truth: Only 17% of tech jobs are entry-level or junior. Companies overwhelmingly want experienced hires.
Entry-Level % by Month
| Month | Entry/Junior | Trend |
|---|---|---|
| Jan | 18% | — |
| Feb | 18% | ⚡ Stable |
| Mar | 17% | 📉 -1% |
| Apr | 16% | 📉 -1% |
| May | 16% | ⚡ Stable |
| Jun | 14% | 📉 -2% (lowest) |
| Jul | 17% | 📈 +3% |
| Aug | 15% | 📉 -2% |
| Sep | 17% | 📈 +2% |
| Oct | 15% | 📉 -2% |
| Nov | 19% | 📈 +4% (highest) |
| Dec | 19% | ⚡ Stable |
Silver lining: Entry-level hiring rebounded in Q4. Companies are investing in the future again.
🏆 Company Size Matters
Who's Hiring the Most?
| Company Size | Jobs | Avg per Company |
|---|---|---|
| 1000+ employees | 217,285 | 1,468 |
| 100K+ employees | 56,751 | 11,350 |
| 1K-5K employees | 34,006 | 479 |
| 251-1K employees | 24,126 | 148 |
| 501-1000 employees | 20,922 | 170 |
Takeaway: Big companies post 1,468 jobs per year on average. Startups average 50-150.
💰 Funding Stage Analysis
Who's Hiring Aggressively?
| Stage | Jobs | Companies | Avg/Company |
|---|---|---|---|
| Series H | 3,591 | 5 | 718 🔥 |
| Series F | 12,439 | 25 | 498 |
| Series E | 12,944 | 43 | 301 |
| Series G | 2,677 | 9 | 297 |
| Series D | 19,046 | 68 | 280 |
| Series B | 12,450 | 70 | 178 |
| Series C | 14,183 | 85 | 167 |
| Series A | 4,051 | 43 | 94 |
Pattern: Later-stage companies (Series D+) hire 3x more per company than early stage.
🔮 What This Means for 2026
Our Predictions Based on the Data
-
Remote stabilizes at 15-20%
- Companies that went remote aren't going back
- On-site mandates are here to stay for big tech
-
Entry-level remains tough
- Only 15-17% of jobs are junior/entry-level
- Competition for new grad roles stays fierce
-
AI/ML continues dominating skill requests
- Every sector wants ML now—not just AI companies
- Python + ML + cloud = the golden combo
-
Sales roles keep growing
- Account Executive was the #2 role overall
- Revenue pressure means more sales hiring
-
Q1 2026 hiring boom
- November/December slowdowns are seasonal
- Expect pent-up demand to release in January
🎯 Action Items for Job Seekers
If you're entry-level:
- ✅ Apply early in the year (Jan-Mar has most openings)
- ✅ Focus on Fintech and Enterprise (higher entry-level %)
- ✅ Learn Python + SQL + AWS (the fundamentals)
If you want remote:
- ✅ Target Enterprise, Fintech, or AI sectors
- ✅ Avoid Hardware and Cloud Computing companies
- ✅ Apply to late-stage (Series D+) companies
If you're changing sectors:
- ✅ To Fintech: Prioritize Java, Kubernetes, compliance knowledge
- ✅ To SaaS: Learn sales metrics, product-led growth concepts
- ✅ To AI: Get ML certifications, build portfolio projects
📍 Start Your Search
Ready to find your next role? Browse jobs from the companies in this analysis:
Data source: Leethub job index, covering 1,092 established tech companies with job postings before and during 2025. Methodology: Direct job board scraping, AI-powered classification for titles, skills, and remote status.
Last updated: December 22, 2025
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