Djinni.co

The active candidate pool on Djinni grew by less than 4% over the past year — but the mix is shifting. There are more experienced candidates and fewer newcomers than a year ago. The only area growing across all experience levels is data-related roles — up 23% overall, with senior candidates increasing by 40% and entry-level by 13%. Marketing, leadership, and DevOps are also seeing candidate growth. Design, development, and QA are shrinking — especially at the junior end.

In April, the average job posting received 17–18 applications. Total application volume was roughly the same as in March (245K), but fewer vacancies actually received them — 14K compared to a record 15,400 in March. The most competitive categories in April: ➡️ JavaScript — 67 applications per vacancy (up from 59) ➡️ QA — 55 (up from 41) ➡️ Design — 37 (up from 31) ➡️ Node.js — 33 (up from 28) ➡️ PHP — 33 (up from 24) C++ roles still attract fewer than 5 applications each. The biggest month-over-month jumps in competition came from iOS, Android, Golang, and PHP — all up 40–45%, well above the overall 8% average. On the other end, Sysadmin and Java saw application numbers drop. Java was actually one of the most competitive categories last month.

Top Hires on Djinni in April 2026: $12.0K Staff/Lead/Principal Data Engineer, UKR https://lnkd.in/dv22Nz94 $11.0K CTO / VP of Engineering / Head Of Development / Engineering Manager / Technical PM, MNE https://lnkd.in/d2sCWRSV $9.0K Senior Сybersecurity Architect, UKR https://lnkd.in/dwnxg-xa $8.0K AI NLP Architect / GenAI and LLM Expert / USPTO Patent Holder, UKR https://lnkd.in/dnUbRDyB $8.0K Chief Operating Officer / Head of Operations, UKR https://lnkd.in/dreNKm9v $7.0K Senior Full Stack Developer, 7+ years in web development, POL https://lnkd.in/deKrgb_g $7.0K Senior Backend Engineer / Full Stack / TypeScript, Node.js, React, Infra, POL https://lnkd.in/dYFxmqD7 $7.0K AI Engineer. Fullstack. AISDLC, UKR https://lnkd.in/dd_BXfGQ $7.0K Senior Product Manager, Product Lead, ROU https://lnkd.in/dRsNgNV6

10% of candidates hired in 2026 never sent a single application — they were hired after a recruiter reached out. 230 candidates hired in the first four months of 2026 hadn't applied to any job in the six months before being hired. That's about 10% of all hires — up from 8% last year and 7% the year before. In 2025, Marketing had the most hires of this type. This year, it's QA. Testers don't receive a huge number of recruiter messages — but apparently they don't need many. QA is currently the largest hiring category overall. The highest share of no-application hires is in Artist and C++ roles — around 20% of hires in these categories happen without a single application sent. DevOps engineers tend to have the most options when they do go passive: those who get hired without applying typically choose from an average of 13 offers. The record-holders for most recruiter messages received: a Lead Gen specialist with 76 and a Python developer with 75 — the latter, by the way, hadn't applied anywhere at all.

24% of jobs on Djinni this year come with a salary range above $5K. Security has the most listings in that bracket, government the fewest — though neither has a huge number of vacancies overall. About a quarter of this year’s posts don’t list a domain at all. Among those that do, Gambling is out in front at 15%, with FinTech and Advertising close behind. That said, Healthcare and DefTech punch above their weight — roughly a third of their listings are $5K+, the highest rate among the top 10 domains. If you’re a Data Engineer, Data Scientist, DevOps, or Golang developer, odds are good you’re looking at $5K+ — more than half of open roles in these categories hit that mark.

QA is the top hiring category in 2026 (for now). Manual QA led all hires in the first quarter, accounting for 9.3% of placements — up from 8.1% a year ago, with modest growth in absolute numbers as well. Designers, project managers, and fullstack developers also saw their share increase. Frontend developers, marketers, and .NET developers saw the sharpest declines. The overall share of developers in total hires keeps shrinking. Ten years ago, they made up 67% of all hires — today it's 36% (down from 40% last year). Non-technical roles have moved in the opposite direction, growing 7× over the same period, from 3.5% to 25%. That said, the growth has been gradual and nearly plateaued in 2023.

Hired candidates tend to have less experience than those actively looking — across almost every category. The only exception is Python. The gap is widest in QA, Recruiter, Business Analyst, and DevOps, where hired candidates average about 1.5 years less experience than active job seekers. Data Analysts have the lowest average experience overall — both among hired candidates and those online — with hires averaging just 2.5 years. PHP developers sit at the other end of the spectrum, with an average of 7 years.

C++ developers are getting twice as many recruiter propositions as they send out applications. The Djinni Index for this category jumped nearly 50% in 2026, hitting 1.87 — meaning for every 100 applications, C++ developers receive 187 recruiter reach-outs. That's 4× higher than the next category on the list, Android (0.43). Meanwhile, for pretty much every other developer category, the index has been sliding since the start of the year. Chart includes only categories with at least 3,000 recruiter messages or applications in the last quarter.

Our Q1 2026 IT job market report is live in blog (link in comments) Here's what stood out: → 61K candidates activated their profiles — an all-time record. Nearly half were returning job seekers, not new registrations. → Recruiter outreach hit 95K messages in March, the highest since November 2022. → Marketing candidates nearly matched JavaScript in search activity — and among brand-new registrants, marketers are already #1. → Support overtook JavaScript in job postings. Frontend listings are down a third year over year. → QA leads in hires for the first time, while the share of developers in total hires dropped to 36% — from 67% a decade ago. The two clearest trends: less technical, less specialized. Full report : ⬇️

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