The IT job hiring market appears to remain strong, as data from the Dice September 2026 Jobs Report shows that IT job postings continued to increase through September after experiencing a slight dip in August. Overall, the data shows that year over year, IT job postings rose 17% compared to September 2025.
Two areas that saw the most growth include AI and ML, where tech postings grew 88% in September 2026 compared to 2025, about five times faster than the average growth rate for tech postings. As employees embrace AI tools and organizations realize AI implementation goals, they’re shifting a hiring focus to security and finance roles, helping to manage and oversee emerging risks and threats as AI becomes commonplace.
With this increased focus on security and finance, organizations are realizing their AI implementation strategies. And for companies ahead of the AI curve, the focus is now on cybersecurity, governance, responsible and ethical AI use, and financial operations to support AI costs.
Skills that matter most
AI skills continue to grow in demand year-over-year and month-over-month. September saw a sharp rise in demand for Claude skills and those including agentic AI, enterprise integration, and the ethical and responsible use of AI. These skills reflect similar patterns that show in the June data, suggesting they continue to be skills consistently in demand for tech workers.
Comparing skills month-to-month, there were slight changes in demand, but electronic engineering remained the fastest growing skill since July, and skills for managing AI systems grew over September. There was also an increase in IT job postings from those looking for skills including creative problem solving, team performance management, and demonstration skills.
As AI implementation takes hold and presents new risks and challenges to IT departments across every industry, companies are also shifting focusing on cybersecurity and critical thinking skills. September saw an increase in demand for endpoint detection and prevention, as well as financial technology, indicating companies are looking for talent to manage the security and cost of AI processes and tools.
The highest growth in demand over the past year are skills involving:
- Claude AI (1033%)
- Agentic AI (446%)
- Responsible AI (401%)
- Enterprise integration (376%)
- AI agents (308%)
- Product family engineering (295%)
- AI infrastructure (283%)
- Tooling (277%)
- Engineering practices (277%)
- AI adoption (276%)
Month over month, the Dice report’s list of fastest growing skills includes:
- Electronic engineering (64%)
- Autodesk Revit (57%)
- Endpoint detection and prevention (51%)
- Creative problem solving (51%)
- Database management systems (49%)
- Team performance management (48%)
- Data migration (45%)
- Demonstration skills (44%)
- FinTech (43%)
Hot hiring markets
In terms of metro areas seeing the fastest increases of job postings, not much has changed since June’s report. However the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria (DC-VA-MD-MW) area did pull ahead of New York-Newark-Jersey City (NY-NJ) metro areas, where IT job postings dipped from over 20,000 in June to just over 16,000 in September. IT job postings in metro Dallas, Chicago, and San Francisco have remained relatively unchanged since June, demonstrating potential hiring stability in these areas.
| Metro area | IT job postings (September) |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 19,248 |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 16,441 |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 10,966 |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 8,385 |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 8,371 |
Credit: Dice September 2026 Jobs Report
In depth:
- AI skills are boosting IT pay — but mostly for senior roles
- State of IT jobs: AI sparks rapidly changing market for skills
- Facing an AI skills gap? A skills-first training approach can help
- AI experience is the hottest IT hiring need. What if you don’t have much?
July 2026: Demand for AI fluency rises
AI skills continue to drive IT job postings, with 75% of US technology openings requiring AI fluency in June, up 178% year-over-year, according to the Dice July 2026 Jobs Report.
Roles in the software industry continue to rise, ranking second behind consulting as the industry seeking the most IT help right now. Aerospace/defense, finance/banking, and manufacturing round out the top five.
Most sought after in the market right now are software engineers, data engineers, systems engineers, electrical engineers, business analysts, data scientists, network engineers, systems administrators, data analysts, and AI engineers, according to Dice.
While these roles remain in high demand, the biggest shift can be seen in the skills that hiring managers are seeking — a list now dominated by AI or AI-adjacent skills as companies rush to adopt enterprise AI tools and services.
The skills that matter most
Demand for enterprise integration skills grew 638% from June 2025 to 2026, the biggest rise year over year, according to Dice, noting that this aligns with other indicators that “connecting agentic systems to existing infrastructure is growing faster than the agentic systems themselves.”
Following in terms of highest growth in demand over the past year are skills involving:
- Agentic AI (587%)
- AI agents (503%)
- Responsible AI (495%)
- AI infrastructure (366%)
- Vector databases (353%)
- Event-driven programming (310%)
- Product family engineering (287%)
- Prompt engineering (253%)
- Observability (251%)
Month over month, the list of fastest growing skills in Dice’s July jobs report includes:
- Electronic engineering (69%)
- API system integration (58%)
- LDAP (55%)
- Digital forensics (54%)
- Data exchange (53%)
- Enterprise integration (50%)
- Threat detection (48%)
- NIST Cybersecurity Framework (47%)
- SAML (45%)
Again, the rise in demand for API, data exchange, and integration skills highlights the recent push to “connect AI systems to enterprise data and workflows,” according to Dice.
Hot hiring markets
Some metro areas are seeing faster increases in tech job postings, with a focus around the New York, Washington, Dallas, Chicago, and San Francisco metro areas. These areas have seen greater growth than the rest of the country, making these metro areas the best to live in if you’re a job seeker with AI fluency skills:
| Metro area | IT job postings (June) |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 20,858 |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 19,906 |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 11,932 |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 9,346 |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 8,699 |
Credit: Dice July 2026 Jobs Report
New Jersey (64%), Maryland (47%), and Illinois (41%) are the states that have seen the highest year-over-year increase in hiring.
Roles in demand
Companies are looking for enterprise systems and consulting managers, including Appian developers, Oracle Cloud financial consultants, ServiceNow managers, principal consultants, and technology consultants. Additionally, they are seeking out IT software engineers, C++ software developers, configuration analysts, support engineers, network infrastructure engineers, AI analysts, and cyber threat intelligence analysts.
Outlook
Businesses inside and outside the tech industry will continue to seek tech workers to help realize AI visions, requiring a wide range of AI fluency and skills. It seems this trend will continue for the foreseeable future, as the job market slowly recovers from several tumultuous years.