The brutal "tech winter" of 2026 and 2025 appears to be thawing. Major tech companies, having successfully restructured, are opening thousands of new positions—but the skills they are looking for have changed dramatically.
The Rise of the AI Engineer
Traditional full-stack development roles are seeing slower growth. Instead, there is a massive demand for "AI Application Engineers"—developers who can glue together LLM APIs, vector databases, and traditional code to build smart products.
Prompt Engineering is Real
Once dismissed as a meme, "Senior Prompt Engineer" requires a deep understanding of model behavior, context window optimization, and chain-of-thought architecture. Salaries for these roles are reportedly hitting $300k+.
Startups are Back
Venture capital funding, which had dried up, is flowing again. However, VCs are no longer interested in "growth at all costs." The new mantra is "path to profitability," and AI startups with real revenue models are the biggest winners.