Monthly Market Pulse: January-February 2026

Delivery management is surging while data and product roles cool. Project manager postings nearly doubled between December and January (+95%), programme managers grew 52%, and delivery managers jumped 80%. Meanwhile, technical PM roles dropped 65%, research scientist ML fell 60%, and every data role contracted by 34 to 47%.

This is the first edition of a monthly snapshot covering what moved, what's emerging, and what the numbers suggest about where the market is heading.

The big picture: a market in transition

January posted a broad correction from December's elevated volumes. Total postings across all families dropped 25%, from 9,916 to 7,437. But the decline wasn't uniform, and the pattern reveals a structural shift in what organisations are prioritising.

Data roles contracted 41%. Product roles fell 39%. Delivery roles grew 72%.

The delivery surge is the standout signal. Organisations appear to be investing in operational capacity: the people who coordinate execution across teams. Whether this reflects a genuine strategic pivot or a seasonal budget pattern (new-year headcount releases favouring operational roles) will become clearer over the coming months.

Hottest roles: delivery takes over

Four of the five fastest-growing role types in January are delivery roles. Project managers led at +95%, followed by delivery managers at +80%, programme managers at +52%, and scrum masters at +49%.

The growth in project management is particularly notable because it nearly doubled from 533 to 1,041 postings in a single month. Programme managers went from 679 to 1,035. These are large absolute increases, suggesting this is budget-driven hiring at scale.

Coldest roles: specialisation retreats

The steepest declines are in roles that require deep specialisation. Research scientist ML dropped 60% (229 to 91). Technical PM fell 65% (636 to 220). Platform PM declined 57% (371 to 159). Product analytics dropped 52% (313 to 151).

The core data roles also contracted, though less dramatically. Data engineering fell 47%, data science 41%, and ML engineering 35%. Core PM, the largest single role type, dropped 36% but remained the second-highest volume role at 1,064 postings.

The pattern suggests organisations are pulling back on specialist roles while maintaining or growing generalist and operational positions. The research and platform roles that saw the steepest cuts tend to have longer hiring cycles and higher compensation. These may be the first roles to pause when budgets tighten.

Skills in motion

The month-over-month skill shifts reveal what companies are prioritising within each role.

For ML engineers, cloud infrastructure skills are climbing. GCP and Kubernetes entered the top 10 in January, while C++ and Deep Learning dropped out. RAG also entered the top 10, reflecting the continued integration of retrieval-augmented generation into production ML systems. The core stack (Python, PyTorch, AWS, LLMs, SQL) remains stable.

For core PMs, soft skills are gaining ground. Cross-functional collaboration, prioritisation, and user research entered the top 10 in January. A/B testing, Jira, and metrics dropped out. This shift may reflect companies looking for PMs who can navigate organisational complexity during periods of operational change.

Data engineers saw a move toward warehouse-native tooling. BigQuery, data modelling, and Databricks entered the top 10, replacing GCP, Kafka, and Kubernetes. The shift toward integrated data platforms (Snowflake, BigQuery, dbt) and away from streaming infrastructure (Kafka) is consistent with what we're seeing in skill frequency data across the broader dataset.

Programme managers are formalising. PMP certification, change management, and Salesforce entered the top 10, while Python, Scrum, and SQL dropped out. The entry of certification requirements and enterprise tooling suggests organisations are hiring for programme managers who can own process at scale.

US salary movements

Salary data across US markets (New York, San Francisco, Denver) shows broad stability with a few notable shifts.

ML engineers remain the highest-paid role, stable at $183k to $264k across the three months. Data engineers held steady at $160k to $240k. Core PMs saw a slight compression at the top of the range, from $223k to $213k maximum, while the floor rose from $163k to $176k.

Programme manager salaries declined modestly, from $180k to $281k in November to $150k to $192k in January, despite rising posting volumes. The combination of surging demand and falling compensation suggests either more mid-level hiring in this role or a geographic mix shift toward lower-cost markets.

The delivery surge is the headline. Whether it's a structural shift or a seasonal budget release won't be clear until March. One month of data can tell you what happened. It can't tell you why, or whether it will continue. We'll know more next month.

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Based on 11,566 job postings from company career pages and aggregator sources, tracking data, product, and delivery roles across London, New York, Denver, San Francisco, and Singapore. Salary data from US markets where sample sizes exceed 30. Data covers November 2025 through February 2026. Full interactive dashboard at richjacobs.me/projects/hiring-market.