Prefer to listen?

---

Companies want to know how developers think

In a year dominated by conversations about AI, one of the strongest signals in developer hiring wasn’t an AI skill at all.

It was System Design.

In 2024, test invites for System Design soared by 82% year-over-year, jumping from the 16th to the 8th most tested skill on the HackerRank platform. This isn’t just fast growth, it’s fast growth at scale.

Top-ranked skills by test invites, 2023-2024

Rank	2023	2024
1	SQL	SQL
2	REST API	REST API
3	Java	Java
4	Python	Python
5	JavaScript	JavaScript
6	C++	C++
7	Linux	Operating Systems
8	Statistics	SYSTEM DESIGN
9	Operating Systems	C
10	CSS	React
11	React	Linux
12	HTML/CSS/JS	Statistics
13	Applied Math	Spring Boot
14	C	CSS
15	PL/SQL	HMTL/CSS/JS
16	SYSTEM DESIGN	Applied Math

 

When a skill with tens of thousands of invites surges past others in demand, it’s worth paying attention. Especially when it’s a skill AI struggles with.

The timing says a lot

System Design demand fell by 40% in 2022, and it wasn’t alone: test invites for many skills slumped during the hiring crunch. Java, Kubernetes, even the indomitable Python all saw decreased demand in 2022. But the timing here is particularly interesting: the lowest point for System Design came in Q4 of 2022, the very same quarter when ChatGPT was introduced.

Since then, the trend has reversed. System Design rebounded strongly by Q3 2023 and continued climbing throughout 2024. That growth lines up almost perfectly with the widespread adoption of AI tools and rapid advances in AI model capabilities, especially in code generation and solving algorithmic-style problems.

This has created a new dynamic in hiring. It’s no longer just about whether someone can code. AI can handle a lot of that, particularly in more traditional assessments. What’s harder to automate is how someone thinks: how they architect, how they make tradeoffs, how they approach a messy problem with incomplete information.

These are the areas where even the most advanced models continue to stumble, and where employers are now digging deeper.

Why System Design stands apart

What makes System Design different isn’t just that it’s hard for AI. It’s that it reveals how humans think.

System Design problems require candidates to operate in the gray areas: to weigh conflicting priorities, balance tradeoffs, and design solutions that work beyond the happy path. These aren’t checklist skills. They’re signals of maturity, experience, and systems thinking.

Done well, System Design tasks reveal how someone navigates ambiguity. It’s not enough to produce correct code. You have to design something that works in the real world, with all its messy constraints and shifting priorities.

The numbers behind the momentum

To put System Design’s growth in perspective, the test invite growth among all skills on the HackerRank platform was 24% in 2024. System Design invites leapt 82% year-over-year, and that’s on top of 88% growth in 2023.

And it’s not just more companies testing for it. It’s existing customers going deeper.

• Test invites rose 82% year-over-year
• Active tests grew 18%
• Average invites per customer increased from 79 to 140 year-over-year.

In other words, the companies who are testing for it are testing for it a lot more, suggesting rising conviction. System Design is becoming a core part of how advanced candidates are evaluated.

The shift toward human-centered skills

This trend reflects a deeper shift in how employers think about developer strength. AI models aren’t just helping developers write code faster, they’re clearing entire classes of problems off the table. That’s driving hiring teams to ask different questions.

They want to know what happens when the path forward isn’t obvious. When constraints compete. When tradeoffs can’t be avoided. When the right answer depends on understanding the context. Those are the moments where human judgment matters most, and where AI, for all its strengths, still falters.

That’s what makes System Design such a useful signal.

It aligns with a growing focus on human-centered tech skills: not just the ability to execute tasks, but the ability to understand context, weigh options, and build with foresight. Skills like communication, architectural thinking, and design tradeoff analysis are becoming more central as AI fills in the lower levels of abstraction.

What this means for the future

System Design may be an early indicator of the kinds of skills that will matter most in an AI-assisted world. Skills that focus on orientation and orchestration, not just execution. Skills that demand intentionality and judgment.

This trend echoes patterns we explored in other recent research, including posts on top skills gaining momentum and those in decline. Across both, a consistent signal has emerged: employers are increasingly prioritizing skills that reflect real-world thinking, adaptability, and architectural judgment.

Architecture is back

System Design is growing because it reflects a broader shift in what the industry values. In a world where execution is getting easier to automate, it’s the thinking behind the build—the architecture, the judgment, the contextual awareness—that sets great developers apart.

System Design isn’t a new skill by any means. But its resurgence isn’t nostalgic; it’s practical. As low-level tasks are increasingly commoditized, System Design is reemerging as a signal of high-leverage thinking for hiring teams.