Олена Руденко
8/4/2026
In Q1, over 61,000 candidates activated their profiles on Djinni — an all-time record, though only by a small margin over Q3 2025.
In early 2023, growth in active candidates was driven mostly by new registrations. Now, new users account for only 30%. Nearly half are returning job seekers who had paused their search. The share of candidates returning after a period of "silence" has also grown — if a candidate doesn't respond to recruiter messages for more than a week, they're automatically removed from search results, but return once they reply. Three years ago this group was 15%; now it's over 20%.
Among candidates who started their search in 2026, 9.3% are frontend developers and 9.2% are marketers — but the trends for these two groups are moving in opposite directions. Over the past two years, the share of frontend developers has been declining, as has the share of QA engineers, while marketers have been growing. Design holds third place at 6.7%, though its share is also lower than in 2025. QA engineers, who were the second largest category in 2021, are now fourth.
Over the past few years, the share of candidates in Support (×3) and Data Analytics (×4) has grown significantly. Fullstack is also rising, replacing more narrow specializations.
Among brand-new candidates who registered on Djinni this year and started searching immediately, marketers are already in first place at nearly 12%. Support is second, and frontend is third. The average experience level of new marketers is just over three years — similar to frontend developers — while fullstack developers tend to join with 5+ years of experience.
As of early April, there are 85,000 active candidates and 9,130 job listings on Djinni. Job listings grew throughout last year, picked up again in early January after the New Year dip, but have been gradually declining since early February. Still, there are significantly more listings than a year ago — in April 2025 the average was around 8,000.
The number of active candidates, on the other hand, has been slowly growing after declining throughout the fall, though the pace is more modest in percentage terms. A year ago there were 84,000 active candidates — 1,000 fewer. The last time the number reached 85K was back in September 2024.
In Q1 2026, recruiters posted 28,000 jobs on Djinni — 6% more than a year ago and 5% more than last quarter. Overall, posting volume has hovered around 26,000–28,000 over the past year without significant change.
Compared to Q1 2025, the strongest growth was in mid-level roles requiring 2+ years of experience. Entry-level postings (1 year of experience) remained stable.
The most-posted categories, as in the previous quarter, are Marketing (15.5%), Sales (7%), and Fullstack (4.5%). Support came in fourth, pushing JavaScript down to fifth. Frontend job postings dropped 13% quarter over quarter and are down by a third compared to last year. Node.js and PHP postings also fell — PHP listings halved over the year, and both categories dropped out of the top 15. C++ postings, by contrast, grew 1.5× year over year. Notably, C++ was already in the top rankings in 2022 and is now making a comeback. Data Science and Recruiter postings also saw notable growth.
Another fast-growing segment is Defence Tech. As of early April, there are over 400 active listings — up from 360 in December. Postings grew 20% quarter over quarter and are up 3.5× compared to Q1 2025. Within deftech, the most sought-after profiles are C++ and Embedded engineers, project managers, and recruiters.
In March, candidates submitted 223,500 applications on Djinni (+9% vs. February). The number of candidates applying also grew — nearly 34,000, compared to 2,000–3,000 fewer in the previous two months.
Competition in March returned to an average of 16 applications per listing, and overall competition this quarter is slightly higher than last quarter, though not dramatically so.
As in previous months, the number of applications has little to do with experience requirements or seniority level — but it varies significantly by category. Developer and QA roles receive the most applications; marketing and data roles are the least competitive.
Most competitive categories in March:
Least competitive categories:
In March, candidates received 95,600 messages from recruiters (+20% vs. February) — the first time the number has exceeded 90,000 since November 2022.
The biggest month-over-month increases were in outreach to Recruiters, HR, and Project Managers (+60% each). Meanwhile, messages to frontend developers and fullstack developers declined slightly, and DevOps outreach dropped by 14%.
As in previous years, marketers receive the most recruiter messages — over 15% of all outreach. Sales is second at 7%, and Support is third at 6.5%.
By number of companies actively recruiting, the ranking looks slightly different. Marketing and Sales still lead, followed by Project Managers, Fullstack, and Frontend developers — with Support only in sixth place.
In terms of messages per candidate, Lead Generation continues to dominate — high outreach volume, low candidate supply. All top-5 categories by this metric are non-technical. The highest-ranked technical category is C++, which is actively sought after in deftech.
In Q1 2026, QA engineers were the most hired category, accounting for 9.3% of all hires (up from 8.1% a year ago), with a slight increase in absolute numbers as well. Designers, project managers, and fullstack developers also grew in share. Frontend developers, marketers, and .NET developers saw notable declines.
The share of developers in total hires continues to fall. Ten years ago they made up 67% of all hires; now it's 36% (down from 40% last year). The share of non-technical specialists has grown 7× over the same period — from 3.5% to 25% — though this growth slowed significantly in 2023.
Salary expectations of developers hired in Q1 2026: 7+ years of experience (currently the largest group) — $4,500. Stable since late 2024. 5–6 years — $3,500. Has been fluctuating over the past year; currently trending down. 3–4 years — $2,200. First decline in two years; was $2,500. 2 years — $1,500. Second consecutive quarter of growth. 1 year — $700. Was $600 last quarter. No experience — $500. Relatively stable.
Note: these are the salary expectations listed in developer profiles at the time of first recruiter contact. A decline in expectations doesn't necessarily mean lower offer salaries — it more likely reflects that less expensive specialists are being hired now compared to 2022.
At least half of all hires reported on Djinni over the past year happened within 17–54 days of first contact (application or recruiter message).
The longest hiring processes are for roles with product ownership responsibility — leads (not shown on the chart) and product managers. The fastest: Lead Generation, SEO, and Recruiter roles.
Chart includes only categories with at least 100 hires over the past year.
Hiring timelines have been relatively stable over the past three years, but in 2021 everything moved much faster — a median of just 21 days (vs. 31 now), with a typical range of 12–35 days.
The two most prominent trends in today's IT market are less technical specialization and less narrow focus. Companies continue to actively hire marketers and generalist fullstack developers. Candidates are also more active — submitting more applications and browsing more listings — but increasingly, those candidates are non-technical.
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