1,207 open developer roles, stable at the same companies

++A fixed method from this edition on

From October, the same rules every month

The August and September figures came from a separate export per reference date, with a manual assessment per vacancy. That approach is hard to repeat exactly every month. From October on we calculate directly from the measurement data of our own vacancy monitor, with rules that stay the same every month.

A role counts in a month when we saw it at least once on the company's vacancy page that month, when our rules classify it as a developer role and when the company is based in the Netherlands. Belgian and other foreign companies are not counted.

With the same rules, September comes out at 960 roles at 342 companies, not the 1,123 roles at 420 companies we published at the time. That difference comes from the method, not from the market. So we only compare October with September under the new method.

++How October compares with September

0.8% more roles at the same companies

That increase says little about the market. In October we expanded the group of companies we track. 148 companies had an open developer role in October but none in September, together accounting for 327 roles. 106 of them, with 248 roles, we only started tracking in October. The other way round, 44 companies from September no longer showed an open developer role in October.

At the same companies, demand held steady

The fairest comparison is the one at the same companies. 298 companies had open developer roles in both September and October.

At these companies the number of roles went from 873 to 880, an increase of 0.8%. Underneath that small change there is movement: 139 roles were added and 132 disappeared. Just over 15% of the roles closed within a month, and about as many were added.

Our cautious reading: demand at these companies did not grow, but it did not shrink either. They fill roles and open new ones at about the same pace. One month is not a trend yet.

++Where October's open roles sit

Close to half of demand is build capacity

We assign the category based on the job title, using fixed keywords. Each role gets one category. When a title says nothing about the type of work, such as software engineer, it goes under General software.

Build capacity is close to half

General software, Back end and Full Stack add up to 575 roles, 47.6% of the total. Most of the demand is still about people who build features, maintain APIs and keep the codebase healthy.

AI and Data: close to one role in five

AI accounts for 125 roles and Data for 112. Together that is 237 roles, 19.6% of October. AI covers roles that build models, language models or AI features into products and processes. Data covers roles that build the pipelines and data models those depend on.

The category split is new in this edition. So we say nothing yet about growth or decline per category. That becomes possible from the next edition.

++Where the roles are located

65.0% of the roles are in the Randstad

We assign the province based on where the company is based.

In this research we count Noord-Holland, Zuid-Holland, Utrecht and Flevoland as the Randstad. That gives three groups:

• +Randstad: 784 roles, 65.0%.
• +Known, outside the Randstad: 360 roles, 29.8%. Noord-Brabant is by far the largest province in that group, with 155 roles.
• +Province unknown: 63 roles, 5.2%.

Unknown means the company's location is missing. It says nothing about remote or hybrid work.

++Which companies are hiring

Company size is unknown for 219 of the 446 companies

For part of the companies we know how many employees they have. That gives this picture:

Read this table as a description, not a conclusion. For 219 of the 446 companies we do not know the size, and they account for 697 of the 1,207 roles. That the known group consists mostly of companies up to 200 employees comes from how we build the group: we mainly track SMEs.

++What this means for engineering leaders

Demand is stable, but it moves

This part is our analysis as tre plus, not an outcome of the measurement itself.

At the companies we tracked for two months, demand is stable but moving. Roles get filled and new ones open. If you are hiring, you will not notice much relief: the competition for the same profiles continues.

An open vacancy does not automatically mean nearshore is the right answer. Sometimes hiring locally is simply the best route, or the problem sits in the role description rather than the market. Nearshore fits best when you need capacity for the long term, can give technical direction yourself and want developers to work inside your existing team. Read how that works on the page about nearshore developers and in our services overview.

If you are looking in the direction of AI or data, there is more background on hiring AI engineers.

++Conclusion

Stable at the same companies, broader with more companies

In October we saw 1,207 open developer roles at 446 Dutch companies. The increase compared with September comes mainly from tracking more companies. At the same 298 companies the number of roles barely changed, with plenty of movement underneath. Build capacity is close to half of demand, AI and Data together close to a fifth.

The earlier editions, with the old method: September 2026 and August 2026. If you are considering adding capacity for the long term, see first what a developer costs in our cost of a developer per month.