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Devs in record demand.
Why AI is displacing, not replacing Australian software developers.
Introduction
Every week, there is a major news story about software developers being laid off due to AI. Atlassian, Wise, Block, Snap etc. the list is long and demoralising.
Companies believe that their IT teams can do more with less. That they can leverage advances in technology to increase efficiencies and decrease headcount. The prevailing narrative is that software developers' jobs are disappearing and under threat.
But this isn't exactly true. In fact, there are more software developers working in Australia today than ever before, and far more than in the pre-AI era. It is one of Australia's fastest growing professions since 2022.
We are seeing devs move from big tech and large enterprises into the mid-market. If a large company with 100 coders reduces the team to 60, those 40 workers do not vanish, nor do they necessarily change their occupation. The data suggests as much.
This may be because of an emerging and powerful employer. Most Australian mid-market companies that are big enough to have small dedicated departments like accounts, HR and sales, have not typically hired software developers. It would take a big team to conduct any meaningful projects, and they don't have the budget or clear business case to employ one. The emergence of AI coding has transformed the economies of hiring software development talent. It's incredible what a solo software developer or team of two can create. If one developer can build your business a custom tool that does exactly the job you want, at a fraction of the cost of a big SaaS licence, hiring them sees and instant return on investment. They can also work much faster, completing entire projects in weeks, not months.
I believe we are entering a golden era for software development, where devs will leave big tech, and find work anywhere and everywhere else.
Dev jobs triple
The chart below shows the historical growth of software development over the last two decades. Including the first labour force survey data for 2026. As of February 2026, there are now 216,000 'software and applications programmers' working in Australia, which is the official Australian and New Zealand Standard Classification of Occupations code.
According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics' labour force survey, which tracks various workforce indicators each quarter, the number of programmers in Australia has increased by 217% since 2006 – from 68k to 216k.
If we compare this growth to 700 occupations tracked by the ABS since 2015, you can see that software development is one of the very fastest growing jobs in the country over the last decade. Ranked #24 out of 702 occupations between 2015-2026.
This trend remains true in the AI era too. Since the explosion of ChatGPT in 2022, software development remains easily in the top quarter for jobs growth in Australia. This zoomed in chart shows only the ~80 largest professions in Australia as of 2022, occupations with at least 50k employees. Software development ranks #10. It is the fastest growing IT job, and one of the fastest growing professional roles in Australia. Six of the other occupations in the top ten are in the field of social care or education.
A migrant workforce
20 years ago, the split between software developers born in Australia and born overseas was almost exactly 50/50. This shifted from 2011 onwards. Today, almost two thirds of developers (62%) were born outside Australia.
Software development roles have been in high demand, but the skills haven't been readily available locally. Skilled worker visas have been a popular means of closing the skills gap, while many companies have chosen to outsource their software development needs. There is plenty of room for improvement for Australian schools and universities to train STEM subjects. Often by the time students graduate, their skills are outdated and do not meet the needs of the market. Uni skills need to more closely resemble the jobs market, and be updated more quickly. In 2026, any computer science related degrees that do not heavily involve the use of AI native software development will not adequately prepare graduates in the real world.
Dev hotspots
The vast majority of Australian software developers live in either NSW or Victoria as of 2025 (71%), up from 63% in 2006. In 2025, the split between the two most populous states is virtually 50/50, although NSW edges out VIC slightly.
The number of programmers in both states has grown significantly over the last 20 years, and since the emergence of AI. Up from 54k (NSW) and 55k (VIC) in 2022 to 68k (NSW) and 67k (VIC) in 2025.
A boy's club
Software development has been a male dominated field for the last 20 years and there has been very little progress towards gender equality. Across all quarterly figures for the last 20 years, women make up 17.3% of the software development workforce. In 2025, this figure is up less than 3% (20.1%).
It will be interesting to see if the emergence of AI reduces the barrier to entry into software development, and if this has an impact on the kinds of people who enter the profession.
Education levels
In 2025, there were between 19,000 and 25,000 people working in software development with no university degree N.B data for education levels below the Higher School Certificate has a larger margin for error. There were 19,000 software developers with just an HSC, and no further form of education, which represents 10% of Australia's software developer workforce.
I expect this figure to change drastically in the years ahead, as people will be able to teach themselves to code more effectively bypassing formal higher education. They will also be able to use AI tools to cover the skills gap that would otherwise exist if the bulk of a developer's job was still manual coding. In the future, there will be less of an emphasis on a person's formal education, and more on their portfolio of work. Employers will increasingly choose people with a body of work and proven, successful projects, over a university certificate.
Conclusion
“For all the doom and gloom surrounding AI layoffs, there is incredibly cause for optimism. We are seeing devs displaced, not replaced. And there are more developers working in Australia than ever before.
“For any software developers that have been laid off recently, I think it will be hard to land another new job in big tech or SaaS. At least not for the next few months. Rightly or wrongly, the market has shifted, and we have to accept the new status quo. Thankfully, when mid-market companies realise what they can achieve by hiring their first dev team, every company will have one.
“I am concerned for developers that don't fully utilise AI. They are burying their heads in the sand. Manual coding skills will always be important, but less and less so. There will simply never be the same kind of demand for manual coding skills as there was before 2022.”
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