How many software engineer jobs are there right now? A dated count from company job boards, where the roles are, how senior, and how fast they change.
Search LinkedIn for software engineer jobs in the US and it says 63,000+. Then you start applying, and the same roles seem to keep coming back. So how many software engineer jobs are there that you could apply to today?
I count them. Every morning my system reads company job boards directly, the pages where the jobs are first posted. This is what that count showed on 27 October 2026, and what it means for your search.
On 27 October 2026, the company job boards I read listed 1,869 software engineer roles in the US, at 145 companies.
That number counts every open role with "software engineer" in the title at a US location. It counts postings, so a role a company lists separately for two cities counts twice. I left out roles whose only locations are outside the US, like London or "Remote, Global".
It isn't every software engineer job in the country. These are mostly tech companies, from AI labs to fintech. Banks, hospitals and government agencies hire software engineers too, and most of them sit outside this count. So read 1,869 as a clean, dated slice of the market, not the whole of it.
A handful of companies hold a big share of it:
| Company | Open software engineer roles |
|---|---|
| Anduril | 314 |
| OpenAI | 145 |
| Palantir | 103 |
| Databricks | 87 |
| Anthropic | 82 |
| Coinbase | 47 |
| Harvey | 41 |
| 36 | |
| Brex | 30 |
| Crusoe | 29 |
Anduril alone has 314, about one in six of all the roles in the count. When people ask how many software engineer jobs are there in the USA, this is the part they rarely hear. A big number can lean heavily on one or two employers.
A job board's headline number and the count above measure different things. On the same day, LinkedIn's search page showed 63,000+ software engineer jobs in the US. Both numbers can be right.
A few things push a board's number up:
None of this makes a board wrong. It means the big number tells you very little about your own chances.
What matters is how many roles fit your title, your level and your location, and how fresh they are. A role posted last week and a role posted last spring look the same in a search list. I wrote about checking the difference in how to see when a job was posted.
[Illustration idea: two stacked bars side by side. A tall one labelled "Job board headline" and a short one labelled "Roles that fit your title, level and city".]
Most software engineer job openings in 2026 sit in two cities. A role can list more than one city, so these numbers overlap.
| Location in the posting | Roles |
|---|---|
| San Francisco | 771 |
| New York | 504 |
| Seattle | 226 |
| Costa Mesa | 131 |
| Boston | 49 |
| Austin | 27 |
| Says remote | 270 |
Costa Mesa shows up because Anduril has its headquarters there. Only 270 roles say remote in the location, about one in seven. If you need remote work, your real market is that smaller number, not 1,869.
Level matters even more. 1,067 of the 1,869 titles say Senior, Staff, Principal, Lead or higher. That's 57%. Staff and Principal alone account for 501.
At the other end, only 34 titles say new grad, early career, junior, associate or graduate. Another 57 are internships.
If you're early in your career, two habits help. Look for titles with "II" in them, which usually means a step above entry level. There were 42 of those. And read roles with no level in the title at all, because the real level often sits in the requirements, not the name.
I've saved this count every day since 22 October. The total hardly changed.
| Day | Software engineer roles | New since the day before | Gone since the day before |
|---|---|---|---|
| 22 Oct | 1,891 | ||
| 23 Oct | 1,886 | 25 | 30 |
| 24 Oct | 1,876 | 14 | 24 |
| 26 Oct | 1,880 | ||
| 27 Oct | 1,869 | 22 | 33 |
One company's page didn't answer on 25 October, so I left that day out.
Across those days, 63 new software engineer roles went up and are still open, and 85 came down. The total moved by 22. So if you check once a week, the number looks the same, but the list underneath it doesn't.
The new roles came from the usual places. Anduril posted 8 of them, OpenAI 6, Palantir 5 and Skydio 5.
This changes how often to look. A weekly check shows you mostly the same roles you saw last week. Checking the companies you care about a few times a week, sorted by newest, puts the fresh ones in front of you while they're still fresh.
Six days of counts can't tell you whether the field will grow or shrink over the next five years. Anyone who claims that from a snapshot is guessing. What this data can tell you is what companies are asking for right now.
They are still hiring. Software engineer titles make up 13.1% of all the US roles on the job boards I read, 1,869 out of 14,227. Some of the biggest hirers are AI companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic and Harvey.
But the demand leans hard toward experience. 57% of the roles want Senior or above, and only 34 carry an entry-level title.
So is software engineering dead in 2026? Not on this evidence. It is harder to get into than the headline count suggests, and easier for people who already have a few years behind them.
If you're earlier in your career, that's useful to know rather than discouraging. It tells you where to spend your time: wider title searches, "II" roles, roles with no level, and companies outside the biggest names.
[Illustration idea: a simple pie split into three parts, "Senior or above 57%", "No level or mid level", and a thin slice "Entry-level titles 34".]
The count that matters is yours. It takes a few minutes to work out.
Take a mid-level engineer in Seattle who would also take remote work. Start with 1,869. Take out the Senior, Staff, Principal and Lead roles and the internships, and 754 are left. Keep Seattle plus the roles that say remote, and you're down to 146.
That 146 is the real market for that person on that day. OpenAI has 23 of them and Stripe has 11, so even here a few companies carry a lot of it.
You can do all four by hand. Or you can use our free job count tool, which gives you the live count for your title and city, with no sign-up.
Most people find their number is much smaller than the headline. That's fine. A smaller, real number is something you can work with.
I built Zipply because counting and searching like this, every day, eats the hours you need for interviews.
Every day we read these company pages and search Google for your titles. We score each role against your CV, skip the weak fits and tell you why, apply to the strong ones for you, and send you one email each morning with what went out.
It costs $50 a month, or $550 a year, with a full refund within seven days of the first payment. There is no free trial.
A few things stay with you. You answer the legal questions, like work authorization and sponsorship. You see every application we send. And we check every tailored CV against your real one, so nothing goes out claiming work you didn't do.
It only works in fields with enough open roles, which is why the count comes first. If your number is thin, I'll say so before you pay. And nobody, us included, can promise you a job. If it sounds useful, you can start here.
So how many software engineer jobs are there right now? On the company job boards I read, 1,869 in the US on 27 October 2026, at 145 companies.
If you're applying and hearing nothing back, this post on getting ghosted covers the usual reasons.
On 27 October 2026, I counted 1,869 open software engineer roles in the US on the company job boards I read, mostly in tech. Job boards that pull from every employer show far more. LinkedIn listed 63,000+ the same day, including repeats and loose matches. The number that fits you depends on your level and location.
Yes, but mostly experienced ones. On 27 October 2026, 145 companies on the pages I track had 1,869 software engineer roles open, and 57% asked for Senior or above. Only 34 titles said new grad, junior or early career, so the entry-level market is much tighter than the headline count suggests.
No, software engineering is not dead in 2026, but it has changed shape. The companies I track posted 63 new software engineer roles in five days, and AI companies are among the biggest hirers. Most openings want proven experience, so early-career engineers need to search wider, by title, level and city.
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