Oxylabs Study Finds Cloud Skills Dominate U.S. Tech Hiring Demand

A new analysis of approximately 850,000 U.S. technology job postings suggests employers continue to prioritize cloud computing and infrastructure expertise over many of the emerging technologies dominating industry conversations.

The research, conducted by web intelligence company Oxylabs, examined public tech job listings published between January 2025 and March 2026. The findings show that cloud platforms and foundational development tools account for the largest share of employer demand, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) appearing in 30% of all postings, followed by Microsoft Azure (24%), Git (21%), Microsoft Excel (15%), Google Cloud Platform (14%), Kubernetes (14%), Docker (13%), Power BI (9%), Terraform (8%) and Tableau (7%).

Nearly 42% of all postings required experience with at least one major cloud platform, according to the report. AWS and Azure were the most frequently requested combination, appearing together in 15% of job descriptions.

The analysis found that cloud platforms accounted for 47% of all tool mentions across the dataset, followed by DevOps and developer tools at 30% and business intelligence platforms at 18%.

“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,” said Andrius Kūkšta, Tech Lead at Oxylabs. “Where it gets more interesting is in the proportions: cloud platforms and DevOps tooling dominate job ads even more heavily than survey-based rankings suggest, while some high-visibility skills (the ones trending on X or headlining conference talks) appear less often than you might think.”

The report also found that hiring activity accelerated despite continued reports of layoffs across parts of the technology industry. The first quarter of 2026 accounted for 39% of all job postings analyzed, representing 3.7 times more hiring activity than the same period in 2025.

Software engineering positions represented the largest share of postings at 38%, followed by data science and artificial intelligence and machine learning roles (14%), technology and engineering management positions (14%), and DevOps and cloud roles (12%).

The study found that demand for infrastructure skills far outpaced other technical specialties. Data storage and infrastructure tools—including AWS, Azure and Google Cloud Platform—represented nearly half of all tool mentions. DevOps and developer experience tools such as Git, Docker, Kubernetes and Terraform accounted for 30%, while business intelligence platforms including Power BI, Tableau and Looker made up 18%. Data ingestion and transformation tools represented 4% of mentions, and orchestration and observability tools accounted for 1%.

“Chasing the most ‘advanced’ or talked-about tools without building cloud fundamentals first is a risky strategy,” Kūkšta said. “The data suggests professionals should first identify their target role category, then master the toolset specific to that path.”

Regionally, California generated the largest share of tech job postings at 13%, followed by Texas (8%) and New York (5%). Virginia posted nearly three times as many tech jobs per capita as the national average, which Oxylabs attributed to the state’s concentration of data centers supporting major cloud providers.

The report also found regional differences in cloud platform demand. While AWS led hiring requirements across most states, Microsoft Azure was the most requested platform in several Upper Midwest and Southern states, including Minnesota, Indiana and Tennessee.

Beyond the technology sector, which accounted for 45% of all postings, professional services generated 17% of hiring demand, followed by finance and manufacturing at 8% each. The media and entertainment industry also emerged as a notable recruiter of cloud talent, with strong demand for AWS and Git skills.

The analysis was based on publicly available U.S. technology job postings collected between January 2025 and March 2026.