By Our Reporter
Cloud platforms, DevOps tools and foundational infrastructure skills are dominating demand in the US technology job market, according to a new analysis of more than 850,000 job postings.
Despite turbulence in the US labour market, technology professionals may find that the skills employers are seeking remain firmly rooted in cloud infrastructure, DevOps and other foundational technologies rather than the latest trends dominating social media and industry conferences.
Oxylabs, a web intelligence company that provides public web data to major artificial intelligence laboratories, analysed roughly 850,000 US technology job postings published between January 2025 and March 2026 to identify the tools and skills most frequently requested by employers.
The analysis found that Amazon Web Services (AWS) was the most requested technology, appearing in 30 per cent of all job postings.
It was followed by Microsoft Azure at 24 per cent, Git at 21 per cent, Excel at 15 per cent, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) at 14 per cent, Kubernetes at 14 per cent, Docker at 13 per cent, Power BI at 9 per cent, Terraform at 8 per cent and Tableau at 7 per cent.
Overall, 42 per cent of the analysed job postings required knowledge of at least one major cloud platform, namely AWS, Azure or GCP.
AWS and Azure also emerged as the most frequently co-mentioned pair of technologies, appearing together in 15 per cent of job descriptions.
The findings suggest that employers continue to place significant emphasis on the fundamental infrastructure required to develop, deploy and maintain modern software and artificial intelligence systems.
The report found that cloud platforms accounted for 47 per cent of all tool mentions, followed by DevOps and developer-experience tools at 30 per cent, while business intelligence and analytics tools accounted for 18 per cent.
Foundational skills dominate hiring demand
According to Andrius Kūkšta, Tech Lead at Oxylabs, the findings largely confirm the importance of cloud, infrastructure and data skills in today’s technology job market.
“The picture we saw after analyzing close to a million job postings largely confirms what experienced developers would guess – cloud, infrastructure, and data skills are in high demand,” Kūkšta said.
He noted, however, that the proportions were particularly significant because cloud platforms and DevOps tooling appeared even more prominently in job advertisements than some survey-based rankings suggest.
He added that some highly visible skills that regularly trend on social media platforms or dominate conference discussions appeared less frequently in actual job postings than might be expected.
Data infrastructure beats online hype
The analysis also identified a sharp increase in technology hiring activity earlier in 2026, despite continuing layoffs across the global technology sector.
The first quarter of 2026 accounted for 39 per cent of all job postings in the dataset, representing 3.7 times more activity than the same period in 2025.
Software engineering roles accounted for the largest share of postings, representing 38 per cent of the total.
They were followed by Data Science and AI/ML at 14 per cent, Tech and Engineering Management at 14 per cent, and DevOps and Cloud roles at 12 per cent.
The distribution of tool requirements across the different job functions points to a market heavily weighted towards infrastructure and deployment, while more specialised data and analytics skills are concentrated in narrower areas of the technology workforce.
Of the five broad tool categories examined, Data Storage and Infrastructure tools—primarily cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure and GCP—accounted for 47 per cent of all tool mentions across technology job postings.
DevOps and Developer Experience tools, led by Git and including Docker, Kubernetes and Terraform, represented 30 per cent.
Business Intelligence and Analytics tools, including Power BI, Tableau and Looker, accounted for 18 per cent.
Meanwhile, Data Ingestion and Transformation tools, such as dbt, Fivetran, Kafka and Airbyte, made up just 4 per cent, while Orchestration and Observability tools, including Airflow, accounted for 1 per cent.
Kūkšta advised technology professionals to build their expertise around the requirements of their target roles rather than simply pursuing the newest or most heavily promoted technologies.
“Chasing the most ‘advanced’ or talked-about tools without building cloud fundamentals first is a risky strategy. The data suggests professionals should first identify their target role category, then master the toolset specific to that path,” he said.
Regional patterns and industry demand
The research also identified significant regional differences in US technology hiring.
California led the country in total technology job-posting volume, accounting for 13 per cent of postings, followed by Texas at 8 per cent and New York at 5 per cent.
Virginia, however, stood out for its exceptionally high concentration of technology jobs relative to its population. The state recorded nearly three times as many tech jobs per capita as the national average, a development attributed to its significant concentration of data centres serving major cloud providers.
AWS was the most requested cloud platform across the majority of US states.
Azure, however, led in a specific cluster of Upper Midwest and Southern states, including Minnesota, Indiana and Tennessee. According to the report, this pattern reflects strong regional enterprise connections in industries such as manufacturing and healthcare.
Technology companies remained the largest source of job postings, generating 45 per cent of all listings.
Outside the core technology sector, professional services accounted for 17 per cent of hiring demand, while finance and manufacturing each accounted for 8 per cent.
The research also identified media and entertainment as an active recruiter of cloud-native technology talent, with employers in the sector relying heavily on AWS and Git for digital production pipelines.
Guidance for technology professionals
The findings offer practical guidance for professionals seeking to enter or advance within the US technology job market.
Rather than focusing exclusively on highly publicised emerging technologies, the analysis suggests that candidates may benefit from developing strong foundations in cloud computing, DevOps, version control, data and infrastructure technologies.
The report is particularly relevant to professionals navigating changes in the technology labour market and considering which skills to prioritise in their career development.
Credit: Oxylab.