Kamal Ghorui
Tech layoffs have crossed 1 lakh in 2026, with LinkedIn the latest big name to join the cull. But for engineers worried about being next, here are jobs that are surviving the AI shake-up—and the answer is more specific than “just learn AI.“LinkedIn is cutting around 875 roles, or 5% of its staff, mostly in engineering, product and marketing. That follows Cisco’s nearly 4,000, PayPal’s 4,800, Coinbase’s 700, and a Meta round on May 20 that will eliminate another 8,000. Microsoft opened a first-ever voluntary buyout to 7% of its US workforce in April. TrueUp’s tracker has logged over 128,000 tech workers gone across 286 separate events this year alone.The bigger paradox: the same companies cutting payroll are pouring roughly $725 billion into AI capex in 2026, up from $410 billion last year. People are out, GPUs are in.
Over 1 lakh jobs gone, $725 billion going into AI
Most cuts are landing on mid-level managers, entry-level coders, and what Block’s Jack Dorsey called organisational layers. Meta is closing 6,000 open roles on top of its layoffs. Oracle has shed roughly 30,000. Amazon has cut 30,000 corporate jobs since October 2025. Block reduced staff by 40% in February in what it openly called an AI remake. March alone saw nearly 50,000 jobs go.But the hiring side isn’t empty. According to the WSJ, IT and computer science job postings on ZipRecruiter are up 14.2% year-on-year in April. Entry-level postings slipped from 8.1% to 7.4%. Senior-level postings jumped to 43.1% from 38.8%.
The engineers companies still want to hire
Recruiters told the WSJ they are chasing experienced individual contributors, not managers. The pitch is simple. One senior engineer with AI fluency can now do the work of a whole team. They catch the bugs AI still introduces. They manage agents instead of people.The roles bubbling up include AI operations, AI maintenance, and solutions engineers—the people who actually wire AI systems into a company’s existing tech stack. Box CEO Aaron Levie said every bank, pharma firm, and manufacturer will need this profile. He is hiring for it internally.
What separates an AI-proof engineer from the rest
ZipRecruiter labour economist Nicole Bachaud told the WSJ that AI-heavy roles are leaning hard on soft skills now—communication, collaboration, the human glue. As agents handle the background grind, the engineer’s job moves closer to consulting.Engineers without AI-specific experience are still struggling, even with long resumes. Janco Associates CEO Victor Janulaitis told the WSJ the few people getting hired have “a proven track record” in AI.One outlier worth noting: AWS is bringing on 11,000 software-engineering interns and early-career hires in 2026, even after cutting 16,000 jobs in January. The exception, not the rule. For everyone else, the WSJ’s reporting points at one playbook—build AI fluency before the recruiter starts looking for it.
