Lenny's Newsletter Tech Job Report: PM Openings Hit 4-Year High as Front-End Halves
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TL;DR
Lenny Rachitsky's fifth tech job market report, published Nov 10, reads two datasets side by side: open roles at more than 9,000 tech companies from TrueUp, and US hiring flows for 124 million professionals from Live Data Technologies. Product manager openings are at their highest level in nearly four years, up 75% from the March 2023 low, while open engineering roles grew just 2.5% in the past year after 29% growth through 2024. US companies hired about 113,000 software engineers in the 12 months to April 2026, less than half the 239,000 peak of 2022. Front-end demand nearly halved in a year, forward-deployed engineer openings rose 4.6x, and the most-mentioned skill in PM job descriptions is now "LLM".
What the numbers are
The report rests on two datasets that measure different things. TrueUp counts open jobs at more than 9,000 tech companies worldwide. Live Data Technologies tracks actual job changes for 124 million professionals, US only, any sector, counting only people who joined a new employer, so promotions and internal moves never show up as hires.
An opening is a company flirting; a hire is a wedding. The report tracks both columns separately, and they disagree: openings rose for PM, engineering and data roles, while US hires fell in all five core roles measured against January 2024.
PMs are winning, on paper
Lenny opens with "PMs seem to be winning in the AI era," and the openings data backs him: more open PM roles than at any point in nearly four years, up 75% from the March 2023 low, and the fastest-growing core role since the start of 2023 at +56%, against +43% for engineering. His chart counts roughly 7,300 open roles.
Hiring is flatter. About 32,600 PMs were hired in the US over the past 12 months, down 4% against January 2024, and PM is the only core role whose share of hiring grew, from 16% in 2021 to 21% now. His reading of the gap: "there's growing demand for PMs, but that landing great PMs is getting harder."
The skills column shows where the demand comes from. Two years ago the most-mentioned skills in PM job descriptions were SQL, Jira, AWS and Python. Today "LLM" leads, Claude sits third, and Cursor, OpenAI and MCP fill out the top eight, with "evals" newly inside the top 10.
Engineering demand stalled
"For the first time in the history of this report, engineering job openings have stalled." Growth ran 29% through 2024, 15% through 2025, then 2.5% in the past year, and there are fewer open engineering roles today than in March. Over 65,000 remain open, still the largest category by far, and more than 120,000 engineers were hired in the US in 2025 alone.
The hiring side is steeper. US companies hired about 113,000 software engineers between May 2025 and April 2026, against 239,000 at the 2022 peak, down every year since. Since January 2024, engineering openings are up 44% while hires fell 17%, so even a cooling market makes landing good engineers hard. One hopeful counter-signal: open tech recruiter roles are up nearly 300% since mid-2023, which Lenny calls a possible "leading indicator of a reacceleration of eng hiring." In postings, Python keeps growing on top, "LLM" just passed Java, and Java keeps sliding.
The specialty split
Underneath the plateau, specialties moved hard in both directions. Forward-deployed engineer (FDE) openings are up 4.6x in a year to around 1,500 roles; security is the fastest-growing specialty right behind it; platform and embedded grew too. Mobile and front-end demand was nearly halved. Lenny's read: "the collapse of specialized/siloed engineering disciplines, with smaller eng teams having broader ownership (thanks to AI)."
The FDE wave is partly title-washing, and the report admits as much. The hiring data still shows a real shift: Live Data Technologies counts Palantir hiring at least 151 FDEs from other US employers between Jan 1 and Nov 6, Google 122, Accenture 50, Salesforce 45. Palantir used to account for about half of all FDE hires; in 2026, more than 2,400 people were hired into the title elsewhere.
Design and research got the worst of it
About 1,900 product design roles are open globally, the lowest since tracking began and down 28% from a year ago, a count Lenny notes is not far above open FDE roles alone. US companies hired about 12,600 designers in the past 12 months, less than half the 27,600 of 2022.
User research fell harder still: about 1,800 US hires in the past year, down 66% from 5,300 in 2022, the steepest drop of any role tracked, with 108 open jobs worldwide. A hundred and eight is less a discipline than a guest list. In 2025, Meta and Google together made about one in eight US user research hires. Lenny blames pace: teams ship earlier and learn after launch, and research tooling now lets non-researchers run their own studies, which leaves him wondering "if UXR as a dedicated function is going extinct."
For designers there is one wrinkle against the gloom: Figma demand has kept growing for three years. But Claude became the second most-mentioned designer skill this spring, crossing CSS, and Cursor edged past CSS as well.
Bay Area up, remote down
A record 15% of open tech roles sit in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the local count is up 43% in a year. One in four open PM and design roles and one in five engineering roles are based there, each roughly double its 2022 share. Remote keeps shrinking: 14% of open roles offer a remote option, the lowest on record, down from 21% in late 2022. Remote engineering fell from 25% to 14%, design from 34% to 19%; PM holds at about one in five.
The lines crossed sometime last year: there are now more open PM, engineering and design roles in the Bay Area than remote roles anywhere in the world. Four years ago remote led by almost two to one.
The catches
- Openings and hires measure different markets: openings come from tech companies worldwide, hires from US professionals in any sector. Reading the two lines as one story overstates the contradiction.
- The hiring data is still filling in. Job changes take months to surface, so the newest one to two months rise after publication and recent counts are a floor.
- The report's own charts disagree slightly (about 1,900 open design roles appears as 1,924 and 1,963 in two charts; user research as 108 and 116), and the free part carries no methodology section.
- Every AI explanation in the piece, from the PM boom to the specialty collapse, is Lenny's stated opinion. The data counts postings and hires; it does not isolate causes.
- The seventh takeaway, that the tech job market is now growing mostly outside software, is behind the paywall, and the free part does not say which roles.
Why builders should care
If you are hiring a PM, you are competing with roughly 7,300 other open roles, and AI tool names are now standard in the description: LLM appears in 11% of PM postings. A JD that names no tools reads as a JD written for 2023.
If you write code for a living, the market pays for security, platform, embedded and deployment-adjacent work while it sheds front-end and mobile specialists. Broad ownership beats a narrow title right now.
If you sell to enterprises, the FDE count is the tell. Buyers expect humans who wire AI into their stack, and Palantir, Google and Accenture are hiring them by the hundred.
If you work remotely, 14% is the number to sit with: the remote share of openings is the lowest on record. Geography is back as a variable.
Key Takeaways
- Lenny Rachitsky's fifth tech job market report (Nov 10) pairs TrueUp openings at 9,000-plus tech companies with Live Data Technologies US hiring data covering 124 million professionals.
- PM openings are at a near four-year high, up 75% from the March 2023 low and +56% since the start of 2023 against +43% for engineering; PM is the only core role whose share of US hiring grew, from 16% in 2021 to 21%.
- Engineering openings grew 29% through 2024, 15% through 2025 and 2.5% in the past year; US companies hired about 113,000 software engineers in the year to April 2026, less than half the 239,000 of 2022.
- Specialties split: FDE openings up 4.6x to around 1,500 (partly rebranded titles), with security, platform and embedded up; mobile, iOS, Android and front-end down sharply, front-end by 51%.
- Design openings are at a record low of about 1,900 (-28% in a year) with 3.8 open PM roles per open design role; user research hires fell 66% from 2022 to about 1,800, with 108 open roles worldwide.
- "LLM" is the most-mentioned skill in PM job descriptions, Claude is third for PMs and second for designers (above CSS), and the Bay Area holds a record 15% of open tech roles while the remote share hits a record-low 14%.
Sources: Lenny's Newsletter, State of the tech job market: late 2026 (Nov 10, 2026), Live Data Technologies, US tech hiring 2026, TrueUp, Lenny Rachitsky on X, CellCog, chart-level read of the report (Nov 11, 2026)