AI was supposed to kill engineering jobs, but new data suggests they’re the most resilient

Oh, the irony. We've been told for years that AI would come for the engineers first—after all, if you can automate the writing of code, why pay the humans? But SignalFire's latest analysis has dropped a spanner in that apocalyptic narrative. Engineering was the most resilient job function in 2025, with early-stage startups actually hiring 7% more engineers than they did back in 2019. So much for the Great Engineer Extinction. Meanwhile, the rest of the workforce can enjoy the front-row seat to the AI revolution, now available as a layoff notice.

Of course, there's a catch. The 7% increase is for early-stage startups—where engineers are less likely to be replaced by AI because they're the ones building the damn thing. Later-stage companies? Not so much. The data doesn't cover the broader trend of major tech firms quietly trimming their engineering headcounts while bragging about AI efficiency gains. But hey, let's not let nuance get in the way of a good headline: 'Engineering jobs resilient!' It's almost as if the people selling AI tools have a vested interest in making sure there are still skilled humans around to deploy them.

So let's raise a glass to the engineers—the final frontier of job security in the age of automation. At least until the AI models can build and scale themselves, at which point this analysis will be a quaint historical footnote. But for now, the robots haven't taken over the coding dungeon. The 7% hiring bump is a tiny, fragile bastion of hope in a sea of 'your job is next' headlines. Cheers to the startup founders who still think they need human programmers. For the rest of us, there's always the service industry—assuming the burger-flipping bots are still on backorder.