Software Development in Ireland in 2026: A Market Change, an AI Shift and What It Means for Developers

The Irish software development market has changed significantly since the pandemic. An initial boom in 2021 and 2022 saw a surge in roles and movement across the industry, but from around 2023 the market contracted sharply. Today, role volumes sit at roughly 40% of pre-pandemic levels.

Market Demand

What makes the current picture particularly striking is where the demand is concentrated. Hiring is happening predominantly at Senior level and above. Junior and mid-level roles have largely dried up widely attributed to the growing adoption of AI, which is automating tasks that would previously have been entry-level work. Employers now want people who can oversee, review and critique what AI produces, rather than those learning the fundamentals themselves.

This creates a problem that the industry hasn’t seen the full effects of just yet. Several of our clients have raised the same concern: if companies aren’t hiring and training juniors today, where will tomorrow’s senior engineers come from?Compounding the reduced role volume is a significant rise in the number of active candidates – a direct consequence of the wave of redundancies seen across the sector in recent years. The result is a tricky mix: fewer roles, more candidates, and one of the most competitive hiring markets we’ve seen. Salary growth has stalled as a result; companies no longer need to pay a premium for in-demand skill sets when they have an abundance of options.

Recruitment processes themselves have lengthened. More steps, more stakeholders, and a resurgence of technical tests are now common. Employers have more choice than ever, and their processes are reflecting that, additional screening steps and technical assessments are increasingly the norm.

AI and the Hiring Process

AI is reshaping recruitment from two directions simultaneously, and it’s creating challenges for everyone involved.

On the employer side, many organisations are now using AI to screen CVs and conduct initial candidate assessments. The risk here is that strong candidates get filtered out. A human reviewer might infer from someone’s background that they’d be well-suited to a role even if the wording isn’t a perfect match – AI often won’t make that leap. If your CV isn’t optimised for how these tools read it, you may never get seen.

On the candidate side, AI is being used extensively to write and tailor CVs and it shows. We’re seeing two distinct problems emerge. The first is embellishment: CVs that look like a near-perfect match for the job spec, but where the interview quickly reveals the reality doesn’t match what’s on the page. The second is that AI-generated CVs are increasingly easy to identify and an unedited one signals to a hiring manager that the content may not be trustworthy before they’ve even picked up the phone.

The volume this is generating on the recruitment side is considerable. Hundreds – sometimes thousands – of applications are arriving for a single role, taking recruiters and hiring managers days to work through, with no reliable way to know which CVs reflect genuine experience and which have been artificially inflated. There’s a quieter consequence of AI adoption that’s also feeding back to us from the market. With tools like GitHub Copilot now standard, many developers are writing significantly less code themselves. The knock-on effect is showing up clearly: the quality of technical test submissions is declining, and candidates are struggling to discuss their own work at a detailed level.

A Note for Software Developer Job Seekers

AI is a useful tool but it isn’t a replacement for knowing your stuff. The candidates getting hired are the ones who have kept up with the technology while staying on top of the fundamentals. In a process that’s more rigorous than it’s been in years, that combination is what gets you over the line.

For a detailed breakdown of current Software Development salaries in Ireland, take a look at our 2026 Software Salary Survey. To speak with one of our team re Software Jobs or expanding your team please see here!