Two engineering searches can start in the same week and feel like two different markets. A generalist software role draws a crowd, while a platform or cyber role can sit open for weeks. Which of those you’re hiring for changes how you should run the search.
The market is selective, and specialists are still scarce
SEEK’s latest Employment Report shows national job ads down 6.0% year over year, with applications per ad at a record high. From what I’m seeing, most of that crowd is applying for generalist software roles.
Employers are responding by hiring with more care. They know which gap they need to close, and they wait for the person who closes it.
Platform, cloud and cyber are now the hardest roles to fill
As teams start using AI for real, rather than testing it, someone has to build the systems it runs on. Someone also has to keep it secure, and keep the cloud bill from surprising the CFO.
Those are platform, cloud and security engineers, and they’re a different hire from the people building features. There are fewer of them, and the good ones tend to have options.
PwC’s numbers point the same way. In Australia last year, job ads for people who use AI in their work grew by 19,300, while ads for people who build AI grew by 1,300. Most businesses are putting AI to work rather than building it from scratch, and in my experience that puts the pressure on the engineers who keep those systems running safely.
At senior level, human skills decide the hire
PwC Australia’s 2026 AI Jobs Barometer found job ads asking for AI skills rose from 20,000 in 2024 to 41,000 in 2025. It also found AI-skilled workers attract an average wage premium of 62%, up from 57%.
The more useful finding for a hiring manager sits alongside those numbers. PwC’s workforce lead, Emma Hardy, said the advantage goes to people who combine technical expertise with trusted human skills. PwC also found recruiters value candidates who can use judgement, take clear ownership and oversee high-stakes decisions.
The pay data backs this up. Since 2021, roles where AI takes over the routine work and leaves the expert calls to people have seen salaries rise 42% faster, globally, than roles where AI lets non-experts do specialist work.
That matches what leaders tell me when they brief a senior role. A senior engineer who can explain a trade-off to the CFO saves a team a lot of meetings, and so does one who flags early that a deadline won’t hold.
The bar is rising for junior engineers too
The same shift is reaching the start of people’s careers. PwC found that in the US, junior workers are now seven times more likely to need skills usually expected of senior staff, such as leadership and managing stakeholders. AI is taking over much of the routine work juniors used to learn on.
That’s US data, but the pattern is worth watching here. If your graduates and juniors are expected to handle more from day one, they need more support to get there. Hardy made the same point: if you want junior people to succeed and use AI responsibly, you have to invest in their skills.
Three things to do before your next engineering hire:
- Brief for the gap. Name the system this person will own and the problem they need to solve, then set the level from there.
- Test judgement out loud. Ask candidates to explain a past trade-off to a non-technical person on the panel.
- Move quickly on specialists. Platform, cloud and cyber candidates tend to have options, so keep the process short and decisions fast.
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