# Software Dev Postings Rose 23.8%. Pitch the Project, Not the Old Job

_Indeed says software dev postings rose 23.8% while quits sat near 2.1%. More openings are likely new roles, so pitch the project they were created for._

- Canonical URL: https://www.refolk.ai/candidates/blog/software-dev-postings-up-23-8-pitch-the-project
- Published: 2026-11-13
- Reading time: 9 min
- Keywords: are tech jobs coming back, indeed tech job postings 2026, how to apply for newly created roles, tailor resume to job posting software engineer, software engineering job market november 2026

Indeed Hiring Lab's Q3 tech update, published November 12, 2026, says software development postings are up 23.8% year over year, against 3.1% for all postings. That headline is real, but it doesn't mean your applications will land more often: most of the gains went to senior and AI-titled roles, and almost nobody who already has a job is quitting. When people stay put, more of the openings you see are probably new headcount built around a specific project. The application that wins pitches that project instead of imitating whoever held a similar job before.

## Are tech jobs coming back?

Yes, but the recovery is uneven and starts from a deep low. Indeed tech job postings rose in all four categories Hiring Lab tracks, led by software development (+23.8%) and IT systems and solutions (+12.3%), yet software development postings are still about 18.6% below their February 2020 level.

The Hiring Lab data runs through October 23, 2026. In the same report, overall US postings turned positive year over year for the first time in nearly four years. Software development postings grew 7.7x as fast as all postings, and IT systems grew 4.0x as fast.

The baseline figure comes from FRED's Indeed software development index, which read 81.4 on November 6, 2026, with February 1, 2020 set at 100. A 23.8% gain from a low point is a recovery. It isn't a boom.

| Metric | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Software dev postings, YoY | +23.8% | Indeed Hiring Lab Q3 update |
| IT systems postings, YoY | +12.3% | Indeed Hiring Lab Q3 update |
| All postings, YoY | +3.1% | Indeed Hiring Lab Q3 update |
| US "Software Engineer" profiles, entry-level | 352,909 | Refolk's index |
| US "Senior Software Engineer" profiles | 182,943 | Refolk's index |
| Entry-level-to-senior profile ratio | ~1.93x | Derived from the two index rows |

The broader labor market is moving slowly. The BLS September JOLTS report showed 7.5 million openings (little changed), 3.4 million quits and 1.6 million layoffs and discharges. Economist Guy Berger summed it up in his MacroMostly recap: further warming will push the numbers the right way, but "it will be a bumpy and periodically disappointing process."

## Who is the rebound actually for?

Mostly senior engineers, plus people who can credibly join AI-titled teams. Indeed data cited by CNBC shows senior roles accounted for 71% of the increase in software development postings between May 2025 and May 2026. Job titles that mention AI accounted for 37%.

> **71%** Share of the software dev posting increase that went to senior roles
>
> Indeed data, May 2025 to May 2026, as reported by CNBC.

Now look at who's applying. In Refolk's index of professional profiles, about 352,909 US profiles carry the title "Software Engineer" at entry-level seniority. About 182,943 hold the title "Senior Software Engineer." That's roughly 1.9 entry-level engineers for every senior one. The two rows were filtered differently (one by seniority, one by title match), so read the ratio as a rough indication, not an exact count.

Demand skews senior and supply skews junior, which creates a squeeze:

- **Seniors** are competing for the 71% of the posting increase written for them, and there are fewer seniors to go around.
- **Juniors** are crowding into the roughly 29% of growth that wasn't senior, so each entry-level posting draws a bigger pile of similar resumes.
- **Location** spreads the two groups differently. The entry-level sample clusters in the SF Bay Area and Seattle, at employers like Google, Figma, Glean, Ashby and LinkedIn. In the senior sample, New York City was the most common region (6 of 25), ahead of San Francisco, with employers like Meta, Google, Datadog, Justworks and August Health.

The AI share needs its own explanation. Indeed chief economist Svenja Gudell said software development postings were up 14% year over year in April 2026, and nearly half of them referenced AI-related skills or responsibilities. Indeed Hiring Lab economist Sneha Puri explained why: firms "still need developers to oversee that work, refine products and help clients integrate the technology." When a title includes "AI," it often signals a brand-new team, and the work is supervising, evaluating and integrating model output. Prompting a chatbot doesn't count.

> **Senior engineering roles open now** - [see the open roles](https://www.refolk.ai/jobs/search?family=engineering&seniority=senior)
>
> Senior postings captured most of the growth in this cycle.

## Why low quits mean more new roles than backfills

When employed people stop quitting, fewer openings exist to replace them, so a larger share of what's posted is probably net-new headcount. The professional and business services quits rate was 2.1% in September 2026, nearly a full percentage point below its 2019 average of about 3.0%.

> **2.1%** Professional and business services quits rate, September 2026
>
> Nearly a full point below the 2019 average of roughly 3.0%.

A **backfill** is a requisition opened to replace someone who left, so it's written around that person's job. A **new role** is a requisition created for work that doesn't have an owner yet, so it's written around a problem.

Indeed Hiring Lab's Cory Stahle described the September JOLTS data as "eerily quiet." The national quits rate hit 2.1%, the first time it has topped 2% since June 2025, but Hiring Lab notes churn hasn't stayed this sluggish for this long since the early 2010s. Turnover is what creates backfills, so low turnover means fewer of them.

This changes who you're competing against in three ways:

1. **Fewer passive incumbents.** Engineers who might have job-hopped are staying put, so fewer currently-employed resumes show up in each pool.
2. **No predecessor to copy.** A brand-new role has no previous employee's resume for the recruiter to compare yours against. The posting describes a problem to solve.
3. **The requirements list is secondary.** The project sentence at the top of a new-role posting tells you more than the bullets below it.

How to tell which kind of posting you're reading:

- **Probably new:** words like "stand up," "build from zero," "first hire," "founding," or a product or launch that doesn't exist yet. "AI" in the title is a strong signal.
- **Probably backfill:** "join our established team," upkeep of a named legacy system, or wording that matches a posting you saw a year ago.

## "Postings up 23.8%" is not "jobs up 23.8%"

The number of open postings can grow even while fewer new postings come in, and that's what happened in Q3. CodeSubmit's analysis of Indeed data found that new postings (live seven days or fewer) averaged 6.5% lower in July through September than in April through June.

One likely reason is that roles stay open longer while employers hold out for a narrow fit. Those listings pile up, so the total count rises even though fewer new listings arrive each week.

What to do about it:

- Sort every job board by date posted, not relevance.
- Apply within the first seven days, the window CodeSubmit used to define "new."
- Treat old postings as a long shot unless your history matches the project almost exactly.

This is also why blasting applications at every posting that matches your title feels like applying into silence. Much of what's listed may be waiting for one specific profile. If you're employed, there's a second cost: every public signal that you're looking (an updated headline, an "open to work" badge) can be seen by your current team.

## How to apply for newly created roles

Open with the project the role exists to deliver, then show you've already done a version of it. The bullet list backs up the pitch. It doesn't replace it.

1. **Find the project sentence.** Most new-role postings have one, usually in the first paragraph: "Building the first evaluation pipeline for customer-facing models." Copy it out word for word.
2. **Lead the cover letter with it.** The first line should name their project and connect it to yours: "You're standing up an eval pipeline for your support assistant. I built the one my current team runs before every model release." Don't start with a summary of your career.
3. **Reorder, don't just rewrite.** Move your closest-matching project to the top of your most recent role, even if it wasn't your biggest one.
4. **Put AI-oversight work up front.** Reviewing, evaluating or integrating model output is the work Puri describes. "Used Copilot" isn't.
5. **Use the posting's nouns.** If they say "eval harness," don't write "testing framework."
6. **Send it in week one.** With new postings down 6.5% quarter over quarter, early applications count for more.

Steps 2 through 5 are tedious to redo for every posting, and they're the exact work [Refolk](/candidates) takes off you. Paste the posting, and Refolk rewrites your own resume around the project it describes, then drafts a cover letter that opens with that project instead of a career summary.

> A new role has no predecessor. Nobody is comparing you to the last person, so pitch the project they haven't started.

Tailoring a software engineer resume to a job posting means rewriting your bullets around the posting's project and level, not swapping in keywords. Because 71% of the posting growth is senior, juniors and seniors need different edits.

### If you're junior

You're one of roughly 1.9 entry-level engineers per senior in Refolk's index, all competing for the non-senior slice of growth. Years of experience won't set you apart. Projects will. Describe what you built, shipped and measured.

- **Before:** "Software engineer with two years of experience in Python and React."
- **After:** "Built and shipped the internal evaluation harness the support-bot team now runs before every model change."

The second version reads like the project sentence in an AI-titled posting, and that's on purpose.

### If you're senior

With fewer backfills in the mix, many of the senior postings driving the rebound are likely built around a new initiative. Lead with a time you scoped something ambiguous yourself, owned it end to end, and got other teams to adopt it. Headcount managed matters less than whether you've done the project they're about to start.

## Where pay is actually moving

Hiring Lab says wage growth picked up dramatically in data & analytics and in IT systems & solutions, so infrastructure, data-platform and IT-ops candidates have more room to negotiate than generalist software engineers right now.

That's a different signal from the postings count. IT systems postings rose 12.3%, about half the software development rate, yet it's one of the categories where pay is moving. Posting volume tells you where the openings are. Wage growth tells you where employers are paying up to fill them.

If your background covers both areas, use that:

- Lead with the infra or data-platform work, even if your title says "Software Engineer."
- Name the systems you ran (warehouses, pipelines, identity, observability) in the posting's own words.
- When you negotiate, anchor on the category the work belongs to, not the generic title on the offer.

## FAQ

### Are tech jobs coming back in 2026?

Postings are, but only partway. Indeed Hiring Lab's Q3 update shows software development postings up 23.8% year over year and IT systems up 12.3%, against 3.1% for all postings. Software development is still about 18.6% below its February 2020 level on FRED's Indeed index, and 71% of the recent growth went to senior roles, so the recovery is real but narrow.

### Why does hiring feel slow if postings are up?

The number of open postings and the number of new postings are different measures. CodeSubmit found new postings averaged 6.5% lower in Q3 than in Q2, while the total stayed elevated, likely because roles stay open longer. You're seeing more listings, but fewer of them are fresh, so sort by date and apply in the first week.

### How can I tell if a job is a backfill or a newly created role?

Read the first paragraph. New roles describe a project without an owner, using words like "stand up," "build," "first hire," or a product that hasn't launched, and AI-titled roles often fall into this group. Backfills describe an existing team and system. With quits near 2.1% in professional and business services, against about 3.0% in 2019, fewer postings are likely backfills than before.

### Should junior engineers apply to senior postings?

Only when your project history closely matches the posting's project. 71% of the software development posting increase went to senior roles, and Refolk's index shows about 1.9 entry-level Software Engineers per Senior Software Engineer, so senior postings draw from a thinner pool. If you've shipped a version of their project, lead with it rather than your years. If you haven't, your time is better spent on mid-level postings that match what you just built.

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_From the Refolk job search blog. More posts: https://www.refolk.ai/candidates/blog/index.md_