Oxylabs Study Unveils Trends, TechGig

A recent analysis of approximately 850,000 US technology job postings by web intelligence company Oxylabs indicates that employers continue to prioritise cloud computing and infrastructure expertise over many trending technologies. The research, which examined public tech job listings published between January 2025 and March 2026, highlights the foundational role of cloud platforms and development tools in current hiring strategies.

Key Skill Dominance

The study found that Amazon Web Services (AWS) featured in 30% of all postings, followed by Microsoft Azure at 24%. Other highly demanded tools include Git (21%), Microsoft Excel (15%), Google Cloud Platform (14%), Kubernetes (14%), and Docker (13%). Nearly 42% of all postings explicitly required experience with at least one major cloud platform, with AWS and Azure being the most frequent combination, appearing together in 15% of job descriptions.

Cloud platforms constituted 47% of all tool mentions across the dataset. DevOps and developer tools followed at 30%, while business intelligence platforms accounted for 18%. Andrius Kūkšta, Tech Lead at Oxylabs, noted that the analysis confirms the high demand for cloud, infrastructure, and data skills, with cloud platforms and DevOps tooling dominating job ads more heavily than many survey-based rankings suggest.

Hiring Acceleration Amidst Layoffs

Despite ongoing reports of layoffs in parts of the technology sector, the study observed an acceleration in hiring activity. The first quarter of 2026 alone accounted for 39% of all job postings analysed, marking a 3.7 times increase in hiring activity compared to the same period in 2025.

Software engineering positions represented the largest share of postings at 38%, followed by data science and artificial intelligence/machine learning roles at 14%, and DevOps and cloud roles at 12%.

Kūkšta advised professionals to focus on mastering toolsets specific to their target role categories rather than chasing the most ‘advanced’ or trending tools without first building cloud fundamentals.

The data suggests that demand for infrastructure skills significantly outpaced other technical specialties, with data storage and infrastructure tools comprising nearly half of all tool mentions.