The Tech Hiring Pulse is the Re:Sourced quarterly market report, built on original data from our active searches rather than survey aggregation. Each quarter we publish time-to-close by discipline, offer acceptance rates, counter-offer frequency and the patterns we are seeing inside live briefs. This is the first edition.
The quarter in one paragraph
Q2 2026 consolidated the patterns Q1 set in motion: AI engineering demand kept widening its gap over generalist software hiring, the contractor market tightened on the back of mid-year transformation programs, and counter-offer activity continued its decline as employers shifted retention spend earlier in the cycle. The structural story underneath: Australian engineering hiring is bifurcating into a fast lane (AI, platform, cleared cyber) where briefs close inside three weeks, and a considered lane (management, principal IC) where decision cycles are lengthening.
Time-to-close by discipline
| Discipline | Median days, intake to signed |
|---|---|
| AI / ML | 21 |
| Software | 18 |
| Data | 19 |
| Cyber | 21 |
| Cloud / Platform | 18 |
| Forward Deployed | 21 |
Fastest close of the quarter: a Forward Deployed Engineer search signed in 14 days, intake to offer.
Across the market, our median time from intake call to signed offer held at 21 days for senior IC roles. The spread matters more than the median: briefs with pre-agreed interview loops and compensation bands calibrated at intake consistently closed in the low teens, while briefs that re-litigated levels mid-search ran past 35 days.
Offer acceptance
Q2 offer acceptance held at 98%. Across the seven offers we extended, 100% were pitched at or above market rate, which is the single clearest driver of acceptance: when the number is calibrated correctly at intake, the offer stage stops being a negotiation and becomes a formality.
The market-wide pattern we observed: offers priced at or above the 50th percentile of the relevant band were accepted at materially higher rates than offers below it. The 25th-to-50th percentile is where offer-stage failures concentrate, consistent with what we flagged in the Salary Guide 2026.
Counter-offer activity
Roughly one in four of our Q2 candidates received a counter-offer from their current employer at resignation. None accepted. That zero is the real signal: when compensation and motivation are calibrated honestly before a candidate resigns, the counter-offer has nothing left to fix.
Directionally, counter-offer frequency continued falling through Q2. Employers are moving retention spend earlier: structured retention reviews at the 9-and-18-month marks rather than emergency counters at resignation. For candidates, the calculus has not changed - accepted counter-offers still show poor 12-month retention.
What moved in compensation
Bands held broadly stable through Q2 against the Q1 baseline published in our Salary Guide. Three movements worth noting:
- Cleared cyber day rates extended their premium, with NV1-plus contractors commanding 15 to 25 per cent over uncleared equivalents and briefs increasingly sourcing interstate.
- AI infrastructure overlap kept pulling platform engineers up a band - GPU scheduling and inference-serving experience now reliably prices 10 to 20 per cent above standard platform work.
- Engineering management compensation faced upward pressure from US-remote comparables, covered in depth in our AU versus US engineering manager analysis.
The brief patterns we saw inside Q2
Three patterns stood out across our Q2 briefs:
- Forward Deployed Engineering surged. FDE generated 10 new briefs in the quarter, the single biggest jump of any discipline, as AI-native and enterprise software companies stood up customer-facing engineering for the first time.
- Teams built from zero. Several clients launched entirely new Forward Deployed and AI Engineering functions, hiring the founding members of teams that did not exist a quarter earlier.
- One hire became five. A single FDE placement repeatedly anchored the next four to five hires. Once the first embedded engineer proved the model, the requirement multiplied. Land-and-expand is now the dominant shape of forward-deployed hiring.
One pattern we will name across the market: first-time AI hiring briefs from non-AI-native companies. These briefs need more intake calibration than any other category because the hiring manager is often pricing against stale generalist bands and interviewing with loops designed for traditional software roles. Where we re-calibrated at intake, these briefs closed normally; where the calibration was skipped, they stalled.
What to watch in Q3
- Mid-year transformation programs will keep contractor supply tight through September, particularly cloud and platform.
- Watch for AI safety and governance roles emerging as a hiring category as regulatory frameworks firm up.
- Graduate and junior hiring remains suppressed; the medium-term effect is a thinning mid-level pipeline that will surface as a senior shortage in two to three years.
- Remote-first postings continue declining while candidate preference for flexibility holds - the employers offering genuine hybrid flexibility will keep winning at offer stage.
Methodology
The Tech Hiring Pulse draws on Re:Sourced active and completed searches in the quarter, supplemented with public market data where noted. Placement data points are aggregated and anonymised; no client or candidate is identifiable. Salary references use the bands maintained in the Australian Tech Engineering Salary Guide 2026 - base only, 25th to 75th percentile of accepted offers.
For a calibrated read on your specific brief, submit a brief. To explore current bands interactively, use the Salary Checker.
FAQ
What is the Tech Hiring Pulse?
A quarterly market report from Re:Sourced built on original placement data: time-to-close by discipline, offer acceptance rates, counter-offer frequency and live brief patterns across the Australian tech market.
How is this different from other salary surveys?
Most market reports aggregate self-reported survey data. The Pulse draws on accepted-offer data from active searches, which reflects what employers actually paid rather than what respondents say they earn.
How often is it published?
Quarterly, within a month of quarter end. Salary bands are maintained continuously in the Salary Guide 2026 and the Pulse reports movements against that baseline.
Can I get the underlying data?
Aggregated data points are published in the report. For named-employer comparables on a specific brief, submit a brief and we will provide a calibrated market read.
What does the 21-day median measure?
The median number of days from the intake call to a signed offer across senior IC placements. It excludes executive searches, which typically run 3 to 6 weeks.