Secrets from 7 tech and career experts on how to get hired in 2026

Over 1,000 Meta employees started off 2026 on a bleak note — they were laid off in mid-January from Reality Labs, the company's Virtual Reality (VR)-focused division.

The public's unenthusiastic response to the Metaverse may have ultimately doomed these positions, but the threat of job loss feels acute to many in the tech industry due to U.S.-imposed tariffs and the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence.

AI was responsible for nearly 55,000 layoffs in the U.S. in 2025, according to CNBC, citing consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Last year marked the highest number of layoffs since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Last year, the tech industry saw over 140,000 layoffs, more than any other industry except the government sector.

Now that we have that out of the way, the good news is that the tech job market isn't all hopeless. AI is currently a net positive for jobs, generating more positions than it eliminates, according to investment company Vanguard.

Mashable spoke to seven professionals in the tech and employment sectors, and they all saw reasons for optimism, offering their own advice for getting hired or moving up. Some of their biggest takeaways:

• Explore courses and training, especially on utilizing AI.
• AI is changing every day. Learning and experience culled from a few months ago may already be outdated.
• Tech jobs don't just happen at tech companies; all organizations need people fluent in AI, data security, and machine learning.
• Companies are looking for people who can help their peers integrate AI into daily workflows and use the technology more effectively.
• If you're currently employed, ask your supervisor how AI might change your role and what you can do to be proactive about that change.
• Old-fashioned networking is still valued, as are communication skills like writing and speaking.

Read more about getting hired or promoted in the testimonials below.

Cristina Mancini, Chief Executive Officer of Black Girls Code

What would you say to someone looking for work in the tech industry?

If I had to choose a word for 2026 it's 'adaptive'; that’s the critical skill. One of my favorite titles for jobs I’ve seen is the human in the loop jobs; that’s making sure there’s a human in the loop before products ship or before you make strategy decisions; [a person] still using their discernment and lived experience.

There's a big shift in the C-suite of some tech companies, with many leaving or shifting roles. How could that filter down to those in entry- and mid-level jobs?

I think it’s interesting because Apple doesn’t usually go through these swings; they’re one of the stable ones. I think it’s interesting; they’re saying they’re all in on AI and, 'We’re going to win on AI.' What does winning on AI mean? Eventually, as happened with Klarna and other organizations, people are going to understand that AI cannot run your company for you. You still need people; they’re going to hire back people who understand how to use the tools. So, making sure you acquire these tools now is critical. That means you’re starting to experiment with the tools.

One of the things we’re proud of that we do [at Black Girls Code] is live training; our virtual training always has teachers. As of last year, you have a 5 percent chance of completing an online course by yourself, but it ratchets up to 95 percent if you’re part of a cohort. Trying to tell people, "just learn it," doesn’t help when people don’t understand the technology. We’re at this interesting juncture where there’s an opportunity to leapfrog some of these legacy systems and programs by learning a new skill that you don’t necessarily have to get a four-year degree for. People should take advantage of it.

Getting a major in some of these technologies is also challenging in a four-year college because the technologies are shifting. By the time you publish [a thesis], it’ll probably be dated.

Also, senior-level executives often don’t have to understand that they’re making everyone else use. We need to be aware of these tools. When you don’t, you could inadvertently be leading an organization that’s shipping harmful products.

I was talking to a friend of mine, he’s a career pivoter, switching out of sports and wants to get into tech. He was confused because everyone was sending him links to online courses, and he was wondering, Where do all these pathways lead? Which are the ones I should take? One of his friends took a cybersecurity course and dropped off because it was too hard. [These new skills] can feel like a foreign language.

I speak a couple of different languages. Once you start learning a new language, other languages become less complicated because you start understanding a different way of thinking. People have been talking about being a lifelong learner forever, but now that’s not a nice-to-have. Sitting on your degree from 20 years ago is not going to help you today.

Every industry is becoming a technology industry. People look at the mass layoffs happening across the tech industry, but there are other industries using technology to drive their business, and they need people who understand how to use it.

What are those opportunities that people aren’t seeing? If you’re a small business owner, suddenly becoming the CTO of your organization is not as complicated as it used to be. You don’t need 12 engineers to think about how to build certain CRMs or your marketing stacks. But you can hire someone who can use the AI tools to build them.

Is this really a pivotal moment in the industry?

I think we’re definitely in an incredible [AI] hype cycle, and all hype cycles burst eventually. But this technology is not going anywhere; some version of it will remain. So, when the companies have to hire back people, they’re going to hire people who understand the technology. A lot of startups, ourselves included, are moving into more place-based opportunities. There are jobs for real-life growth developers; people want to connect in person in the tech industry. People are understanding that people matter and help drive business forward.

Hetu Kamichetty, Chief Technology Officer of Xaira, a company utilizing AI to advance drug discovery

What tech positions are going to be in demand in 2026?

Let me quickly introduce myself and Xaira a little bit. I'm a computer scientist by training. My PhD was in AI. I spent a decade in tech. I was at Facebook. I was at Amazon. I was part of the agentic AI efforts at Facebook before I quit, and now I'm a cofounder and CTO of this company called Xaira. We are using AI to change how drugs and medicines are made, and ultimately how health is managed using AI.

And that relates to the question that you asked, because if you think about the space we're operating, five years ago, I was building AI models to improve search or improve chatbots, and now I'm using AI models to improve how we make medicine.

I just came back from [a conference and] a big theme across the board was AI is changing how tech is done, how we code — but that's so 2025. AI is changing how science might be done, how health might be managed, how drug discovery is done, and a bunch of other fields. AI through robotics is changing manufacturing. So, a big theme [of 2026] is how AI could play a role in other disciplines outside of what we might have considered tech, right?

I mean, tech is, I don't know, 10, 20 percent of the GDP. Health is 20 percent of the GDP, so tech is a smaller fraction of the GDP than everything else [that makes up the GDP], and through AI, we might be able to change and improve not just what we might consider traditional tech.

What would you say to someone trying to get into tech or trying to advance in their career? How can they prepare themselves for a world shifting so quickly?

I think AI is going to improve and change how other disciplines and other industries are done. So if you're a tech person and you're trying to learn AI, very good news, it's fairly easy to learn that these days. I have 20 years of experience in AI, but unfortunately, only the last six months count. Because the field is moving so rapidly, anybody wanting to learn more about AI just needs to learn about what happened this year, and they're kind of caught up on everything.

So for the tech folk trying to learn more AI, there's plenty of online resources, there's plenty of communities; it's fairly easy to write AI code because of coding agents, so you just need to formulate your question.

For the larger sector, there's plenty of people who are tech-adjacent, and I think that's the big push I see; there's going to be a lot more desire and need for people who are bilingual or at least can speak AI, who can understand how AI might change things, understand how to use AI, understand scenarios where AI would be great, scenarios where AI would need some help.

Let's say you're a product designer, a product designer who speaks AI, a data scientist, a data scientist who understands how AI models are used to how AI models are evaluated — all of these things have a way for you to build on your experience and add that AI layer on top of it.

There's a huge need for people able to keep up with what's changing, especially as a startup. We want people to think big, we want them to be bold, we want them to be willing to pivot when things evolve, when things change under the ground.

If you only said, well, 'I'm a tech person and I do [Quality Assurance].' Because of AI, quality assurance of software is very, very different than what it was three years ago, what it was five years ago, what it was maybe even at the beginning of 2025. There's still a huge value for QA skills. But those QA skills need to be bought in with [knowledge of] how agents work. What are the kinds of failure modes that agents currently face that you should be increasing your emphasis on? Folks who are willing to learn and look at this as an opportunity are going to succeed.

Jasmine Escalera, career expert at Zety, a resume template builder

What tech positions are emerging?

AI is really just taking over the career space. AI and machine learning engineers, data scientists who use AI, prompt engineers, AI product managers; all are for sure going to be hot. Any kind of position that’s unique in integrating AI in everyday living.

Everyone is thinking of their jobs and their longevity. The use of AI in organizations opens up the possibility for AI to almost become an organizational team sport. What I mean is, people building AI from a technical perspective are going to be really important, but also the people who can help integrate it into the organization and its everyday workflows are going to be very important. We’re seeing the emergence of AI operations specialists, people who look at day-to-day operations and try to optimize them using AI workflow management. We’re seeing people like AI governance and AI compliance professionals; these kinds of positions are also coming up. We’re seeing AI used in HR more, so we’re looking at individuals who know how to use AI in the HR space from an ethical standpoint, and those in HR who can [use AI to help] with up-skilling.

We think about these technical roles in AI, but there’s a big open space for positions where a specific skillset can be transferred. If you’re in operations management, for example, you can get complementary AI skills that will help you stay in operations management, but also help you assist an organization in building workflows that can support AI optimization.

How can candidates make themselves more viable in this economy?

I read OpenAI is starting its own courses on how to use ChatGPT better and how to prompt it better. Google was starting courses. Many of these companies are saying, 'We want to get X number of people trained in AI utilization to balance what may happen in the workforce.'

Go to conferences, tap in with people in your field, ask leaders in your organization, ‘How do you see AI being implemented across the organization, but also within my team and role? And what are some of the things I can do to keep myself viable?’

You can also ask if, for instance, you're an HR manager or representative, 'What are some of the things I can do to learn how to better integrate AI to support my company?' Even if you have a specific role, there could be an AI twist to it and then could make you incredibly valuable.

We know AI is going to shift a lot of positions, but we’re focusing so much on what positions AI is going to take away. But what’s going to thrive? What unique things could come out of this?

Asking how AI is going to change your role...is the number one strategy for you now.

Is networking still important?

It’s always been really important to establish a network, but if you are in the position now of asking how AI is going to change your role, then this is the number one strategy for you now. You have to become inquisitive and curious, not shut down. Sometimes when fear comes up — hey, this is people’s livelihoods — we can shut down. This is the time to be proactive and inquisitive. Talking to people is so incredibly important.

AJ Balance, Chief Product Officer of Grindr

What trends for tech jobs do you see in 2026?

We really believe AI, similar to Grindr’s founding, is one of these paradigm-shifting technologies, like the smartphone was in 2009, that really allows us to build amazing product experiences that make those different types of connections happen. Our approach to AI is really about helping users make more, better, deeper connections more easily.

Earlier this year, we had a vision of AI at Grindr — which we call GAYI — to build Grindr into an AI-native company, incorporating that intelligence that AI brings at all layers of the product and technical architecture, either in operations or internally. So, we think of [AI] as this paradigm shift, both in product and the way we work. It is impacting how we’re building out our team and how we work in the future.

Similar to other big leaps in technology, we’re seeing a lot of jobs augmented by AI to different degrees of functionality and scope, rather than being fully replaced by AI. We see it as a big opportunity in our product to accelerate the ability for users to make connections more easily, to help us be incredibly productive and augment the types of jobs folks are doing, and perform even more impactful work.

What are you looking for from someone who wants to be part of Grindr’s further adoption of AI?

As AI continues to evolve, I think there’s a lot of demand for folks proficient in leveraging these new tools, like generative AI, across the product and software development lifecycle. So, [we're looking for] folks already using these tools for product management and software engineering work, those who have experience trying them out and applying them in those roles, as well as folks working in design, data, security, and platform teams.

One of the things we see coming is increased demand for applied AI engineers, designers, [and] data scientists who are proficient in building products using these [AI] tools and incorporating them into their day-to-day work, whether it’s in their primary job at the company they're at or even side projects they build. Those are particularly exciting skills and valuable for building products and technology at Grindr.

There are certain degrees or disciplines folks study — like computer science to become a software engineer, designers having gone through a design curriculum — some of those skills are very relevant for roles like product design, engineering, data science. Real experience working in those fields and using AI tools in that work is what really sets [candidates] apart.

Alberto Silveira, Chief Technology Officer at HireVue, an AI and HR management company

The most in-demand tech jobs won’t just build AI; they’ll secure it, govern it, and make it usable at scale.

On the most in-demand tech jobs in 2026:

It almost goes without saying that roles like data scientists and machine learning engineers will remain in high demand in 2026. What’s accelerating, though, is hiring for cybersecurity and AI governance roles as organizations grapple with new AI-driven security threats, data privacy risks, and regulatory requirements. We’re also seeing growing demand for cloud engineers, AI product managers, and applied AI specialists who can translate advanced technology into real business outcomes. In short, the most in-demand tech jobs won’t just build AI; they’ll secure it, govern it, and make it usable at scale.

It’s also worth remembering that in the era of AI, it’s not just about particular hard skills like coding languages or platform experience — people with critical thinking skills will be more in demand than ever before.

Where job seekers should be looking for work:

Who gets the job should always be about who is the most qualified, but the fact is that a referral goes a long way in a crowded field. One of the best ways to streamline a job search is to start by reaching out to your network for referrals and focus on applying to those roles. It’s important to not just network from behind a screen — attend local meetups and events when you can.

When tapping into your network, don’t just think about the people you’re closest to; research shows that connections with "weak ties" can yield the most significant results. Set a personal goal to reach out to five people daily and ask them for referrals.

Kathleen Kramer, 2026 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Past President.

On the top trends jobseekers should be aware of in 2026:

My general advice is to be zigging instead of zagging. Since it's AI everywhere, you want to be looking for contributing the non-AI expertise to where AI is going, which is not the general hop-on-the-bandwagon approach.

The second [trend] would be [that] semiconductors are back big and software-only is very sad, which is also the opposite of what's happened, say, in the last four years. So coding is an and...it's not the pathway to success. In fact, the opposite of a coding-only approach is robotics. I see much more opportunity [in robotics] for a career-interested person.

On the value of being able to write and ideate without AI:

You think about the most brilliant, most admired people in tech. How many of them have no communication skills? How many of them are asking ChatGPT to write their speech? It's just not happening.

I always value those skills that make you the complete technologist. There's job function, but there's also just personal value, personal enrichment, personal power to advance yourself, and to be able to rely on yourself. But if I was hiring someone who can't get any work done without consulting an outside AI, it's just not really a significant added value.

— As told to Rebecca Ruiz

Marcie Foy, Director of Career Consultants, Carnegie Mellon University

On the current state of the tech job market:

I think one thing that we're seeing with the tech job market, broadly speaking, is that there's a lot of changes going on, especially with...AI coming more to the forefront within the tech industry. What companies are looking for, the skill sets they need, [and] the experiences that they need are kind of in this state of flux and change.

So it's really, really important for all potential candidates, whether they be undergraduate students through PhDs or experienced individuals, to be able to demonstrate that they are at the top of their game as well with these new changes. They [need to] come to the table with the skill sets that the companies are looking for, and clearly communicate that in their application materials and throughout the interview process, especially in those technical interviews.

Being able to really demonstrate what you can do, how you can do it, and showcase those skills throughout that process is even more important. [That's] not to say it wasn't important before, but it's even more important now with the change of technical skill set that's needed, with the emphasis of AI continuing to grow.

On the skills tech employers are looking for right now:

For a lot of the fields that I support, more specifically in the engineering and computer science spaces, [employers are looking for] the individuals that are able to actually kind of create in the AI space. They're skilled with machine learning and working with language models and natural language processing and areas related to where the work is happening within AI.

That's where we're starting to see things pick up within the tech industry. Moving beyond [programming] to be able to develop the AI agents and things that can do some of that baseline work, as well as more data analysis and machine learning side of things [is important].

On the importance of clear communication:

The emphasis is changing on what we commonly referred to as soft or transferable skills, [such as] the ability to communicate really effectively in the workplace environment, both written and verbally, the ability to explain your thought process, to problem solve and to use all of the information that's at your disposal, including AI, to be able to generate new ideas, [and] to be able to solve the more challenging problems at hand.

The ability to communicate those softer, transferable skills in an interview and on your resume is even more important, regardless of how technical the goal is.

Something that I'm also hearing and seeing is in the interview process — really being able to articulate how you did something, not just what you did, but actually how you did it, the choices that you made, why you made those choices, to show that you have command over your subject matter. That's a way for both candidates to stand out, but also for employers to validate the level of individual that they're considering, given that those individuals also have access to AI to help them prepare for those interviews. — As told to Rebecca Ruiz

These interviews have been edited for length and clarity. Rebecca Ruiz contributed to this story.