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Hiring bounced back in 2024, but the recovery didn’t lift all boats equally.
As discussed in the HackerRank 2025 Developer Skills Report, demand for experienced developers surged across the board. Senior (+19%) and lead (+22%) hiring activity saw the sharpest gains as companies rebuilt their teams. Meanwhile, entry- and junior-level roles barely moved, climbing just +7% and +9% after a brutal 2023.
Taken in isolation, this might suggest a cautious but healthy rebound. But viewed through a 2025 lens, a deeper pattern emerges: teams are leaning hard into experience, and leaving early-career talent behind.
That has implications not just for individual roles, but the industry’s talent pipeline in the years to come.
To understand what’s really happening, we dug deeper into the platform data to look at how demand has shifted by geography, role, and experience level.
Our lens: test invites, not job postings
The metric we use here is test invites: each time a candidate is invited to complete an assessment through the HackerRank platform, it represents a live hiring opportunity. Unlike job posting data, a test invite is a direct signal of hiring activity that shows where companies are pursuing developer talent.
Cautious recovery or shifting priorities?
The post-2023 rebound reflects a cautious return to growth. But the uneven recovery across experience levels suggests something deeper may be happening.
- Companies are playing it safe. Many are rebuilding their teams by prioritizing experienced developers who can deliver immediate impact.
- AI is reshaping expectations. It’s not just changing how developers work, but what they work on. Companies may be reallocating headcount toward more strategic or AI-adjacent efforts, where senior expertise is especially critical.
- Training gaps persist. Junior developers often require more onboarding and support. That can be a tough sell in lean times, especially when teams are still recalibrating.
The result: a growing emphasis on experience and fewer opportunities for early-career talent.
Geographic patterns (with important caveats)
Every region saw increased hiring activity at the senior and lead levels in 2024. But early-career demand remains uneven:
- Americas (AMER): Entry-level hiring declined (-6%), and junior roles were nearly flat (+1.5%).
- Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA): Entry-level hiring rose strongly (+37%), but junior growth lagged (-0.4%).
- Asia-Pacific (APAC): The most consistent growth across all levels, from entry (+26%) and junior (+16%) to senior (+26%) and lead (+46%).
One important caveat: these figures reflect the location of the hiring company, not necessarily the candidate. Cross-border hiring is widespread, and we regularly see companies in AMER and EMEA sourcing junior talent from APAC and beyond. So while these figures offer directional insight, they don’t represent local opportunity in a vacuum.
How hiring is shifting across different developer roles
The surge in senior hiring is clear, but not every role is riding the same wave. Some have rebounded dramatically. Others continue to slide. And a few, despite their volume, remain surprisingly flat.
Back-end is booming again
Back-end developer hiring roared back in 2024 after a punishing 2023. Entry-level invites jumped +50%, and demand rose across all experience levels. It’s one of the few roles showing consistent recovery from junior to lead, which suggests companies are rebuilding core services and infrastructure.
Data roles are hot, but they’re on different trajectories
Not all data roles are surging in the same way.
Data analyst was one of the few roles to post consistent growth throughout 2023—a year when most roles declined—and it absolutely exploded in 2024, especially at the entry level (+516%). Demand also rose across all experience levels, signaling broad-based appetite for analytical talent.
Data engineer roles also had a strong showing in 2023 but cooled off somewhat in 2024. Entry and junior roles (-2%) both saw effectively flat growth, while senior and lead role invites were up 46% and 40% respectively. This could signal a shift in hiring strategy: doubling down on senior data infrastructure talent while pulling back on pipeline roles.
Data scientist roles saw a steep drop in 2023 and rebounded across the board in 2024, though far more modestly than data analysts or engineers. That may reflect a shift in how companies approach AI. Instead of building models from scratch, many are now integrating hosted solutions or foundation models, reducing the need for deep ML expertise and changing the scope of the role.
The big picture: demand for data talent is real, but it’s fragmented. Companies know they need it. But they’re still figuring out which roles drive value, which ones to scale, and what level of experience to bet on.
Cloud and ML are becoming foundational, but not entry-level
Hiring for cloud and machine learning engineers surged in 2024, especially at the senior (+68%) and lead (+53%) levels. What’s notable isn’t just the growth, it’s where that growth is concentrated. Entry-level demand dropped for ML engineers (-42%) and was relatively modest for cloud, suggesting these roles are increasingly seen as senior territory.
It tracks with how AI is showing up in practice. As companies shift from experimenting with models to deploying AI at scale, the pressure is on to make that infrastructure reliable, secure, and production-ready. That’s not work you hand to early-career developers. It’s why teams are staffing these functions from the top down, prioritizing experience over volume.
Full-stack and SRE also lean senior
Full-stack and SRE hiring showed a clear tilt toward experience. Junior and entry-level demand fell, while senior and lead invites climbed. These are roles where seniority often means autonomy, and teams seem to be optimizing for that.
Front-end and QA are still in retreat
Front-end roles continued their multi-year decline. Junior demand fell another 22% after an identical drop in 2023. Entry-level invites were also down. QA engineering tells a similar story: junior and entry-level hiring activity dropped sharply, while only lead roles saw growth. Both roles seem to be absorbing the downstream effects of AI and shifting org priorities.
Software engineer remains dominant, but flat
Software engineer remains the highest-volume role, especially for entry-level talent. But despite the scale, growth was soft across the board: 5% at entry, 7% at senior, and a rare decline at the lead level (-8%).
The takeaway: even in high-demand fields, junior roles aren’t recovering at the same pace. Companies are overwhelmingly prioritizing experience.
What this means for 2025 and beyond
The rise in senior hiring is a clear response to today’s needs: speed, stability, and strategic execution. But it comes with a cost.
If companies don’t invest in early-career talent, they risk shrinking the pipeline for future mid-level roles. Experience can’t be bought off the shelf; it has to be grown. And the longer early-career hiring remains stagnant, the harder that becomes.
The path forward isn’t about swinging back to junior-heavy hiring. It’s about balance, building teams that can deliver today while developing the talent that will lead tomorrow.