Series: Developer Market Monitor, September 2026 · Measured on 30 September 2026

1,123 open developer roles across 420 companies

The second edition of our Developer Market Monitor. On 30 September 2026 we counted 1,123 open developer roles at 420 companies, up from 957 roles at 385 companies in August. Measured within the fixed population tre plus tracks, not across the whole Dutch market.

Our second monthly reading of the Developer Market Monitor closed at the end of the day on 30 September 2026. Across the companies and vacancies tre plus tracks, 1,123 developer roles were open at 420 companies. In August the same measurement found 957 roles at 385 companies.

One thing to be clear about up front. This is not a count of every developer vacancy in the Netherlands. It is a monthly measurement inside a fixed population of prospects and vacancies, using the same selection, classification and deduplication rules each time. That makes it useful for following changes within that population. It does not tell you how the Dutch labour market as a whole is moving.

How September compares with August

Only three numbers can be compared reliably between the two editions, so these are the only ones we compare.

What the data shows: monitored developer roles rose by 17.3%, while the number of companies with at least one open developer role rose by 9.1%. Roles grew faster than companies, so the average company in this population had slightly more roles open at once, 2.7 instead of 2.5.

How we read it, carefully: some of the increase comes from companies entering the picture, but more of it comes from companies hiring for several roles at the same time. That looks more like teams adding capacity than teams backfilling a single seat.

What it does not show: that developer demand across the Netherlands grew by 17.3%. Two readings are also not a trend. Whether this continues is something the next editions will have to show.

Where September's open roles sit

The table below splits the 1,123 roles by category. Treat it as a September snapshot. We have no reliable category breakdown for August, so there is no month-on-month comparison here.

Build capacity is still the bulk of it

General software, back end and Full Stack together account for 472 roles, or 42.0%. These are the people who ship features, look after APIs and keep a codebase healthy. In September, that is still the largest block of demand in the population we track.

AI and Data: close to one role in five

AI and Data each come to exactly 110 roles. Combined that is 220 roles, 19.6% of the September reading, so close to one in five open developer roles in this snapshot sits in one of the two.

We keep them as separate categories on purpose. Data covers roles such as data engineers and analytics engineers who build pipelines and data models. AI covers roles that put models, language models or AI features into products and processes. The profiles overlap, but the day-to-day work is different.

What this does not mean: that AI is growing, that it is the fastest-growing category, or that it is replacing other developer roles. Without comparable August category figures, this is September's mix, not a movement.

Testing and QA, DevOps and Cloud

Testing and QA holds 81 roles, 7.2%, which keeps it a meaningful category: companies are still looking for people who own quality and test automation. DevOps (81) and Cloud (77) add up to 158 roles. We keep those apart too, since DevOps work leans towards pipelines and deployment, while Cloud work is more about setting up and running the environment itself. None of this says anything about direction.

Where the roles are located

For readers outside the Netherlands: the country has twelve provinces. The Randstad is the densely populated western ring around Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht. For this research we count four provinces as the Randstad: Noord-Holland, Zuid-Holland, Utrecht and Flevoland.

Each role was assigned a province, mostly based on where the company is located and sometimes on the location in the vacancy. Again, no comparison with August.

That gives three groups:

- Randstad: 624 roles, 55.6%.

- Known location outside the Randstad: 320 roles, 28.5%. Noord-Brabant, in the south, is by far the largest province in this group with 132 roles.

- Province unknown: 179 roles, 15.9%.

Unknown simply means we could not pin down the province reliably. It does not mean the role is remote, and we draw no conclusions about remote or hybrid work from these numbers.

Which companies are hiring

For part of the companies we know the headcount. This is what that shows:

Read this as a description, not a finding. For 234 of the 420 companies there is no usable size classification, and those companies account for 683 of the 1,123 roles. With that much missing, you cannot say which company segment drives demand. For the same reason we do not compare company size with August.

What this means for engineering leaders

This section is tre plus's own analysis rather than an outcome of the measurement.

More open roles within the same population, and more roles per company, can point to continued capacity pressure at these companies. If you have several roles open at once, you are not unusual in this group.

An open vacancy does not automatically make nearshore the right answer. Sometimes hiring locally is simply the better route, or the role description is the real problem rather than the market. Nearshore fits best when you need capacity for the long term, can steer the technical work yourself and want developers to work inside your existing team. Our page on nearshore developers explains how that works, and our services overview sets out the models side by side.

The mix of 110 AI roles and 110 Data roles also shows that demand in this population is broader than classic web development. If that is where you are hiring, hiring AI engineers covers what to look for.

Method and limitations

The Developer Market Monitor is not a full count of all vacancies in the Netherlands. It is a monthly measurement within the fixed population of prospects and vacancies that tre plus tracks. The same selection and classification rules are applied at every measurement, so changes within this population stay comparable.

The reference point is the end of the day on 30 September 2026. The raw export held 3,267 open vacancies. After deduplication 3,258 unique vacancies remained: 9 vacancies appeared twice, each time with the same vacancy URL once tracking parameters were stripped. Of those 3,258, 1,123 were counted as developer roles, 2,095 were excluded and 40 were left out because they needed more context to classify.

Only 98 of the 1,123 developer roles carry a valid original posting date, about 8.7%. That is too thin to say anything about how long vacancies stay open in this population, so this edition makes no claims about vacancy age.

We do not publish company names, job titles or other details of individual vacancies.

Conclusion

In the population tre plus tracks, 1,123 developer roles were open at 420 companies at the end of September. That is 17.3% more roles and 9.1% more companies than at the end of August, with 2.7 roles per company instead of 2.5. Build capacity still makes up most of the demand, and AI and Data together account for almost a fifth of the September reading. That last figure is a snapshot, not a growth rate.

The previous edition is still available: the Developer Market Monitor for August 2026. If you are weighing up adding capacity from abroad, our guide to hiring developers in Kosovo is a practical next read.

Previous edition: Almost 1,000 open developer vacancies: Dutch market measurement, August 2026