We Counted the Skills in 360,000 Job Postings. AI Was the Most-Requested Hard Skill.
Nitin SinghAnalysis of 360k+ job postings (Dec 2025-Jun 2026): AI is the #2 most-requested skill, ahead of Python, SQL, AWS and Java.
There's a lot of talk about AI reshaping hiring, so we checked it against our own data: 360,000+ job postings collected between December 27, 2025 and June 16, 2026, with skills extracted and standardized per posting. Here's what employers actually asked for.
The headline: "AI" is the #2 skill of any kind
- "AI" appeared in 19.8% of all postings — the second most-requested skill overall, behind only communication (23.1%).
- That puts it ahead of every individual language and platform: Python (18.6%), SQL (11.7%), AWS (11.3%), Java (10.5%).
- In other words: AI is now the most-requested hard skill on the market.
Top 15 skills across all postings
| # | Skill | Share of postings |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Communication | 23.1% |
| 2 | AI | 19.8% |
| 3 | Python | 18.6% |
| 4 | SQL | 11.7% |
| 5 | AWS | 11.3% |
| 6 | Leadership | 11.2% |
| 7 | Java | 10.5% |
| 8 | Analytical | 9.5% |
| 9 | JavaScript | 8.7% |
| 10 | Security | 8.7% |
| 11 | Git | 8.2% |
| 12 | Azure | 8.2% |
| 13 | Collaboration | 7.7% |
| 14 | Compliance | 7.5% |
| 15 | Attention to detail | 7.5% |
A posting lists many skills, so shares don't sum to 100% — each figure is the share of postings that mention the skill.
It's not just an engineering ask
- Product Managers: AI is the #1 skill (37.0%) — ahead of any PM tool or methodology.
- Designers (UX/UI): 23.1% of postings name it.
- Business Analysts: 19.1%.
- Among engineers, Data Scientist / ML roles lead (63.7%), followed by Full Stack (30.7%) and Data Engineering (26.6%).
Seniority: demand doubles at Principal level
AI demand is highest at Principal level: 39.5% of postings — roughly 2× the overall rate. Interestingly, internships (24.5%) ask for it more often than entry-level roles (19.8%): companies seem to want juniors who arrive already AI-literate.
The named AI stack is still small
When postings get specific, the numbers drop fast: LLMs 4.2%, generative AI 3.3%, LangChain/LangGraph 2.2%, prompt engineering 1.6%, RAG 1.6%, agentic AI 0.9%. Most employers ask for "AI" as a capability, not a specific framework — the tooling churn is priced in.
Remote roles want AI more
A remote posting was 3.2× likelier to ask for LLM experience than an on-site one. Overall workplace split in the corpus: 75.8% on-site, 12.5% remote, 11.7% hybrid.
Methodology & caveats
Skills were extracted and standardized from each job description across 360,336 postings (Dec 27, 2025 – Jun 16, 2026). This measures how often a skill is requested, not the number of hires. Role families are grouped from job titles. Full methodology, role-by-role breakdowns, and interactive charts are in the full report.
The underlying data is open (CC BY 4.0): Hugging Face · Kaggle · GitHub — or explore it interactively in the Skills 2026 Explorer.
Citation: Qarera analysis of 360,000+ job postings (2026), https://www.qarera.com/reports/most-in-demand-skills-2026. CC BY 4.0.
We pull job-postings data for Qarera, a free AI job-search platform: resume builder, ATS checker, job matching with match scores, and application tracking.