Oxylabs Research Finds Cloud and Infrastructure Tools Dominate U.S. Tech Hiring

Analysis of around 850,000 job postings shows AWS, Azure, Git and other foundational technologies leading employer requirements

Oxylabs, a web intelligence company, has analysed approximately 850,000 U.S. tech job postings published between January 2025 and March 2026 to examine the technologies and skills most frequently requested by employers.

The analysis found that cloud platforms and foundational tools dominate technology requirements in U.S. job advertisements, with infrastructure, DevOps and data-related technologies accounting for much of the demand.

AWS Leads Technology Requirements

Amazon Web Services (AWS) appeared in 30% of all analysed job postings, making it the most frequently requested technology in the dataset. It was followed by:

Microsoft Azure: 24%
Git: 21%
Excel: 15%
Google Cloud Platform (GCP): 14%
Kubernetes: 14%
Docker: 13%
Power BI: 9%
Terraform: 8%
Tableau: 7%

Nearly 42% of all analysed postings required knowledge of at least one major cloud platform.

AWS and Azure were also the most frequently co-mentioned cloud platforms, appearing together in 15% of job descriptions.

Infrastructure Accounts for Nearly Half of Tool Mentions

The analysis categorised technology requirements into five broad groups. Data Storage and Infrastructure tools, primarily cloud platforms such as AWS, Azure and GCP, represented 47% of all tool mentions across the job postings.

DevOps and Developer Experience tools, led by Git and including Docker, Kubernetes and Terraform, accounted for 30%.

Other categories included:

Business Intelligence and Analytics: 18%
Data Ingestion and Transformation: 4%
Orchestration and Observability: 1%

The Business Intelligence and Analytics category includes tools such as Power BI, Tableau and Looker, while Data Ingestion and Transformation includes dbt, Fivetran, Kafka and Airbyte. Orchestration and Observability tools include Airflow.

Job Posting Activity Increased in Early 2026

Despite technology-sector layoffs, hiring activity increased sharply during the first quarter of 2026, which accounted for 39% of all listings in the dataset.

The report states that this represented 3.7 times more activity than during the same period a year earlier.

By job function, Software Engineering roles accounted for the largest share of posting volume at 38%. This was followed by:

Data Science and AI/ML: 14%
Tech and Engineering Management: 14%
DevOps and Cloud: 12%

The distribution of technology requirements across these functions indicates a strong emphasis on infrastructure and deployment, while more specialised data and analytics skills were concentrated in narrower workforce segments.

Oxylabs Highlights Cloud and DevOps Demand

Andrius Kūkšta, Tech Lead at Oxylabs, said:

“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. 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,”

Kūkšta also said:

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

Regional Differences Across the U.S.

California accounted for the largest share of total job posting volume at 13%, followed by Texas at 8% and New York at 5%.

Virginia recorded a different pattern when postings were measured on a per-capita basis. The state posted nearly three times as many tech jobs per capita as the national average, with the report attributing this to its concentration of data centres serving major cloud providers.

AWS was the most requested cloud platform across the majority of states. However, Azure led in a cluster of Upper Midwest and Southern states, including Minnesota, Indiana and Tennessee.

The report links this regional pattern to enterprise connections in sectors including manufacturing and healthcare.

Demand Extends Beyond the Core Technology Sector

The core technology sector generated 45% of all listings analysed by Oxylabs.

Professional services represented another 17%, while finance and manufacturing each accounted for 8% of hiring demand.

The media and entertainment sector also emerged as an active recruiter of cloud-native talent, with employers relying heavily on AWS and Git for digital production pipelines.

The findings indicate that cloud, infrastructure and DevOps technologies feature prominently across technology hiring, while demand also extends into professional services, finance, manufacturing, media and entertainment.