Surprise uptick in software engineering recruitment
June and July are usually the quietest months for tech recruitment. This year there’s been a spike in interest from recruiters in software engineers and EMs. We dig into this unexpected, welcome trend
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The Pragmatic Engineer is back after a week-and-a-half’s summer vacation. Things are usually slower during this summer break period – recruitment included – since recruiters and candidates take holidays, too! Also, headcount for the first half of the year (H1) has usually been filled by now, while H2 headcount is often finalized during August, with hiring kicking off in earnest in September.
But this summer has been different. A subscriber based in New York pinged me, sharing what they’ve seen:
“As a software developer, I've noticed a slight uptick in recruiter activity in the last month or two. I initially dismissed it, but another developer mentioned noticing an increase in LinkedIn recruiter mail, primarily from smaller startups. I was wondering if you've heard of this, [and] if you'd do a piece shedding light on this phenomenon and its causes.”
This piqued my interest and I asked around, messaging more than 40 tech professionals. This revealed an interesting phenomenon: recruitment for software engineers and related disciplines did spike in June and July, defying the conventional pattern.
We cover this topic in this issue, addressing:
US uptick. Interest from recruiters up on the East and West Coasts.
More UK and EU inbounds. The uptick in Europe is especially interesting, given the summer holidays are longer there, and recruitment is typically lower at this time.
Why an uptick now? Hiring managers and executives share why their companies are hiring more. There are several reasons.
Product and design. Some uptick in recruiter interest for these areas, too.
Reality check. Some companies are not hiring more, and plenty of engineers aren’t seeing more responses.
Appendix: other regions. Data points from the Nordics, Central Europe, India, Latin America, and Israel.
1. US uptick
Below are some personal reports from engineering managers, software engineers, and data/ML engineers, who have observed the recruitment uptick. All shared their observations directly with me, and the responses are anonymized.
US East Coast
Early-stage startups, AI startups, and hedge funds seem to have accelerated hiring in the past few months, based on readers’ first-hand accounts:
An engineering manager (EM) at Big Tech, 10 years of experience (YOE), based in New York City (NYC):
“I have noticed an uptick in recruiting messages over the past month. These are mostly from early startups looking to hire for Head of Engineering positions, or AI startups looking for an Engineering Manager or Tech Lead. Also, it seems like finance headhunters are unusually active at the moment.”
Tech Lead, 8 YOE, NYC:
“I've been receiving an uptick in recruiter messages related to AI and scaleups. Even more of the ‘usual’ hedge fund recruiters have been active in the past few months.”
Senior ML Engineer, startup, 7 YOE, Boston:
“I've been noticing inbounds ratcheting up since April to the point that I had to turn off my ‘open to work’ settings on LinkedIn. I am still getting a decent amount of inbound, even with the setting turned off. It's definitely not like the peak late-2021-2022 frenzy (something I'd be surprised to see again) but it’s similar to – maybe higher than – the pre-Covid status quo.
My inbounds are largely from startups, but most of my experience is working in early stage startups, so there is a potential confounder in me!”
Senior Engineer, startup, 5 YOE, NYC:
“I’ve noticed that in the past month, there have been relatively more recruiters reaching out. As context, I've been looking for jobs since May. At the same time, out of all of the applications I've sent, only one company started the interview process with me.”
Software engineer, ex-Big Tech, 10 YOE Seattle:
“I got laid off in May. Since then, I have been reached out to by recruiters from Amazon, Bytedance, and various consultancies. After I upgraded to Linkedin Premium, there has been an uptick in reach-outs from recruiters on Linkedin. I’m still unsure if the uptick could be attributed to this change, or if the market is getting better.”
Companies are seeing offer acceptance rates dropping, which is one indicator that it’s a bit more of an “employee’s market” than we’ve been used to in the recent past. From a director of engineering at a publicly traded tech company in Boston:
“While our hiring slowed slightly, our rate of hiring has been relatively steady over the past 2 years. For experienced roles, 6 months ago our offer acceptance rates were close to 100%, now they're at 75% or lower, for roughly the same offers, compensation-wise. Definitely feels like a thaw in the job market to me.”
US West Coast
AI startups, startups, and mid-sized tech companies, seem to be increasing their recruitment pace. Readers’ observations:
Senior software engineer (ex-Big Tech), at a scaleup, 10 YOE, San Francisco (SF):
“There has been an influx from AI startups for sure, and some regular startups, but I am now seeing mid-size and large companies reaching out too, with very few public companies reaching out.”
“I've left my profile as "Open to work" for the last 4-5 months. This month (July), I've gotten a significant amount of inbounds from internal and external recruiters:
Inbound recruiter messages to a senior engineer at a publicly traded tech company in SF
Tech lead, Big Tech, 10 YOE, SF:
“My observation on the hiring uptick is that it isn’t just startups / scaleups. I'm starting to get more messages from the likes of Airbnb and Snowflake.”
Software engineer, 2 YOE, Los Angeles (LA):
“I had a recruiter from a startup reach out right after I announced my promotion, and another one via direct email. As someone with less than 2 years experience, that was very encouraging.”
Rest of the US
Startups and some mid-size and larger tech companies have been reaching out more, nationwide.
Senior frontend engineer, Big Tech, 15 YOE, western US:
“I have seen an uptick — and not just from startups! I've had reachouts from Datadog and TikTok in the past month. A few more than usual from my local market as well (Utah, which has a budding tech economy) that are higher quality than I normally see. Hopefully, this is evidence of a normalizing tech job market! “
“Recruiter messages to me on LinkedIn have absolutely picked up. I noticed because my inbox was pretty dead for the last year. Mostly startups, but 1 friend also sent me a job description for a position at GitHub as well.”
Director of data science, consultancy, 7 YOE northwest US:
“I have had an uptick in legitimate outreach. A few months ago it was dry, but it has suddenly gotten better.”
Lead engineer, startup, 6 YOE, western US:
“I categorized reach outs into three categories:
“Relevant” jobs are exactly my niche or current stack.
“Almost relevant” jobs are outside my niche, or related to stacks I've used in the past.
“Irrelevant” are totally off-base stacks, or things that look like spam/mass messages.
Here’s the “relevant” reach outs this person has received in 2024:
Relevant recruiter messages to a full remote, lead engineer at a startup, western US
Software architect, publicly traded company, 15 YOE, southern central US:
“I’m getting a lot of requests for interviews on LinkedIn lately. My inbox had been quiet for a long time, I probably received more recruiters messages in the last couple of weeks than the last 4 months.”
Software engineer, 2 YOE, southwestern US
“It's been pretty much a drought for the last two months; about one message a month. I did get a message from a new founder last week which led to a good conversation, though he won't be making any hiring decisions for at least another month. It sounded like he got a decently large block of funding, but is being extra cautious about where and how he deploys it.
In the past, namely 2021-2023, I was getting multiple messages per week, sometimes per day.”
2. More UK and EU inbounds
Recruiters in Europe take longer summer vacations than in the US, which makes the increase in recruitment activity across Europe eye-catching. Here’s what I’ve heard from tech professionals in these markets.
UK
Startups, finance companies, scaleups, and AI companies, seem to have increased recruitment reach outs in the last few months, according to some first-hand accounts:
Engineering manager, Big Tech, 15 YOE:
“I have observed an increase in reach outs from recruiters.
At work, I now also get a higher number of interview requests popping in my work calendar: 2-3 a week, vs 2-3 a month, 6-12 months ago. These interviews are all for L5+ (senior-and-above levels.)
I suppose we’re perhaps seeing the green shoots after a bleak 18-24 months. Or it might be temporary due to ‘AI hype’ (my company is investing in AI, big time!) Time will tell!”
“The recruiter messages never dried up – they’ve been coming fairly regularly and (at least here in London) they’ve been a mix of startups, finance companies, and the occasional pre-IPO scale up. The only thing missing is Big Tech – save for Meta and Amazon, both of which have been fairly active.”
Staff software engineer, scaleup 15 YOE:
“I can confirm that I’ve seen an uptick in recruiter messages and with lower importance connection requests. I generally haven’t put effort into my LinkedIn profile, so for the past year it’s been rather quiet. Recently, I’ve gotten noticeably more ‘template’ recruitment messages than before.”
Senior backend engineer, 10 YOE:
“I’m seeing way more recruiter inbound activity over the past month or two. Mostly in fintech and climate tech in my case. Inbound is still limited to hybrid, or fully in person roles, which is acceptable to me. Willingness to sponsor visas still seems to be lacking in the inbound roles, which indicates to me there’s still some softness in the UK market.”
Senior ML Engineer at a Big Tech, 8 YOE:
“I have seen a huge uptick in reach outs from recruiters. This is largely smaller companies, but also includes top tier companies recently including OpenAI, Anthropic and Jane Street.”
ML engineer, publicly traded tech company, 5 YOE:
“There is an absolute uptick of recruiter inbound messages. In the last two months, the job specs have suddenly started flowing again. This is particularly true in my area of work in the MLOps / ML Platform space. The market for that is better than it was before the end of zero percent interest rates, mainly because it's a new skill market.”
Senior data scientist, 5 YOE:
“I have my profile as ‘not looking’ and had several approaches in the last few weeks (above normal.)”
Western Europe
Driving the hiring uptick seems to bestartups and scaleups raising funding, mid-size companies, and some larger companies. Observations from a senior engineer, 8 YOE, Switzerland:
“I got around 4-5 messages from various recruiters in the past 1.5 weeks, which wasn’t the case in the last few months! Most are from startups and small/mid-sized companies”
Senior engineer, 7 YOE, Switzerland:
“I am seeing an uptick in inbound messages from recruiters. Until recently, it was one per week or less. Around a third are from crypto startups, the rest are mid-to-large scaleups. None are from Big Tech.”
Staff engineer, scaleup, 10 YOE, the Netherlands:
“I am seeing an increase in reach outs in the last 2 months. This is mostly from larger companies, and some from startups.”
Software engineer, 5 YOE, the Netherlands:
“I have recently set my profile as ‘open to work.’ Although I don't have any big names in my profile and I switched technologies, I still get on average an inbound request from a recruiter every day, even weekends!
Data engineer, 3 YOE, France:
“I'm receiving some more reach outs recently, but not that much compared to previous months. The difference is in the quality of the offers: scaleup reach outs are back, but not as intense as 3 years ago.”
Based on readers’ feedback, it seems that something changed in several countries’ recruitment markets around 2 months ago:
Backend engineer, 15 YOE, Germany:
“In the spring, I was let go from my company, together with my whole team. As I was browsing job portals, I saw surprisingly few software engineer job postings, but a lot of DevOps openings. So I started to apply for DevOps positions instead.
Fast forward to June, and software engineer listings were back in larger numbers. Since then, I managed to land a backend engineer position, and I’m starting my new job in September.”
Frontend engineer at a full-remote tech startup, France:
“Definitely seeing a lot more recruiter interest for roles that are actually not bad. It had died down last year, but it's been picking up for 2-3 months now.”
Software test architect, 15 YOE, the Netherlands:
“I confirm that I started to get messages from recruiters in the last 1-2 months.”
“My anecdotal evidence is we’re seeing an increase in the last 2 months. In my inbox there is a healthy mix of messages from start-ups/scale-ups that have closed a funding round, established companies, and headhunters trying to fill confidential roles. There is a clear uptick of messages related to startups with fresh funding.”
Data engineer, 4 YOE, Germany:
“Definitely something is moving, received 10 messages in the last 20 days for data engineer roles in startups (in Berlin, or remote in Germany). This is around a 10x increase: I got only 2 messages in previous 3 months (April to June.)”
Hiring for principal, staff and tech lead roles is new to some readers. Two engineers mentioned they were surprised by reach outs for these roles, which was not the case even in 2022! A principal software engineer at a publicly traded company with 15 YOE, said:
“Startups and scaleups started to reach out for principal/staff engineering and tech lead roles seemingly out of the blue, a month or two ago. I get around one reachout per week, after months of nothing. The interesting part is that in 2020-2023 my title was the same, but I only got senior engineer roles as inbound, not principal ones like now.”
Despite the uptick, it’s still hard to get an interview. A director of engineering at a publicly traded tech company in the Netherlands, shared:
“I've definitely seen an uptick in recruitment messages, as well as callbacks from recruiters.
Even from senior people, I hear that even for very strong job matches they don't even get a call back. No first call, nothing. Just straight up rejection. But this also seems to have improved with a lot more companies being open to at least the first chat.
One common feedback I hear from friends and colleagues, even senior people or from FAANG, is that even the big ones are hiring too (Uber, Booking, Meta, Adyen, etc.) Still, you get an instant rejection, not even a first call; when a couple of years ago you would always get at least the first call.”
Southern Europe
VC-funded and pre-IPO companies seem to have hastened recruitment in the last two months:
Security engineer, scaleup, 15 YOE, Spain:
“I can confirm that in the last two months I have received more messages from companies and recruiters offering a job, compared to the last 2 years! All the companies are VC backed, and Series A, or pre-IPO stage. So it looks like there is an interest in growth again.”
Senior engineering manager at a US scaleup, 20 YOE, Italy:
“I see an uptick from Series B/A startups and local companies (many hybrid, a few full remote, and one or two office based). A few come from public tech companies. Unfortunately, a few are recruiters just collecting CVs.
All in all, it seems like the market is back to pre-Covid days.”
Tech lead, scaleup, 10 YOE, Spain
“I can confirm – I'm not sure why! – there's been a spike in the offers received during the last 3-4 weeks. Most are startups.”
Parts of southern Europe could be seeing more interest due to the lower cost of employing software professionals in the region. A tech lead at a scaleup in Portugal notes that several companies are moving their engineering to the country, or expanding current teams there:
“Last week, I got 10 (!!) inbound recruiter messages in just a day. Usually, I get this many over a week or more. Something is happening.
50% of messages are from startups. The rest is a mix of mid-size companies and established big companies (the smallest portion.) As context, in Portugal a big portion of companies recruiting are moving here. Either starting to build their IT hubs or reinforcing the existing team.”
For context, Portugal is especially popular in tech recruitment as a gateway to hire and relocate software professionals from Brazil – the world’s 7th largest country by population, with 215M people.
