WhatsInDemand / will AI replace…
Will AI replace software engineers?
Based on live job postings — updated September 2026
There are 17,151 live software engineers openings right now. Across the roughly 3,300 fast-growing companies we track, 38% of current software engineers openings now ask for AI skills. The work is changing, not going away.
What AI is actually changing
AI shows up directly in these openings: Artificial Intelligence. That is the part of the job changing fastest.
Employers still ask most for: Communication, Python, Computer Science, Collaboration, AWS, Java — the parts of the work people are hired to own.
The longer answer for software engineers
Software engineering is not going away, but it is changing faster than most jobs. The tools now write a lot of the routine code — the simple pages, the setup work, the first draft of a test. That is real, and it is why the job feels different than it did two years ago.
What the tools still cannot do is decide what to build, hold a messy system in their head, or answer for it when something breaks at 2am. Those are the parts companies keep hiring for. Across the roughly 3,300 fast-growing companies we track, most software engineer openings still ask first for judgment and system skills, with AI skills showing up as a fast-growing extra rather than the main thing.
So the honest read: fewer people needed for the simple parts, more value on the hard parts. If you write code for a living, the smart move is to get good at the work the tools are bad at — designing systems, catching subtle bugs, and deciding what is worth building in the first place.
Who's hiring right now
| Company | Open roles |
|---|---|
| Speechify | 957 |
| SpaceX | 791 |
| Anduril Industries | 736 |
| Databricks | 273 |
| ASM | 237 |
| Shield AI | 233 |
See the full Software Engineer data page →