These Are the Jobs Corporate America Is Hiring for Most Right Now

According to a December 2025 report on corporate hiring trends, research and machine learning roles are in the highest demand by major US companies. The study by digital business card provider Wave Connect analyzed job openings across eight leading employers, including NVIDIA, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, and Mastercard.

• Major companies are posting more jobs for research and machine learning than for any other role, with nearly 1 in every 5 openings going to these positions.

• Product managers remain among the highest-paid hires, with average salaries reaching $230K at the biggest employers.

• Tech businesses show strong demand for specialized hardware roles, with silicon and chip design positions making up over 14% of available jobs.

The research looked at 400 job postings from eight major US companies, analyzing 50 recent openings from each employer. Jobs were sorted by type and grouped into categories to reveal hiring trends, with rankings showing which roles appear most often. The study also tracked salary data, job availability, and monthly search interest in these positions.

Here's a look at the top job categories by hiring demand:

Standardized category	Number of Job Opportunities in Top Companies	% out of Total Job Opportunities in Top Companies	Average Salary in Top Companies
Research / Machine Learning / AI	73	18.25%	$275,000
Software Engineering	70	17.50%	$260,000
Hardware & Engineering (incl. Silicon/IC/ASIC/VLSI)	57	14.25%	$245,000
Product & Program Management	45	11.25%	$230,000
Infrastructure / IT / Cloud / Network / Security / Data Center	34	8.50%	$235,000
Customer Support / Service	30	7.50%	$95,000
Operations / Manufacturing / Quality	29	7.25%	$135,000
Sales / Business Development	25	6.25%	$210,000
Data / Analytics / Data Science	13	3.25%	$220,000
Legal / Corporate / HR / Policy / Compliance	12	3.00%	$200,000

You can access the complete research findings here.

1. Research / Machine Learning / AI

• Share of corporate job openings: 18.25%

• Jobs available nationwide: 5,736

• Monthly job searches: 75.2K

• Average salary: $275K

• Required skills: Python, TensorFlow/PyTorch, Data Analysis, Deep Learning

Research and machine learning roles are the most in-demand jobs at corporations right now. The major American companies have 73 active openings in this category, which means nearly 1 in every 5 vacancies go to those positions. These AI-related jobs pay the most at $275K on average, which also explains why over 75K people look for this type of work each month.

2. Software Engineering

Software development takes second place, making up 17.5% of openings at major corporations. The companies studied had 70 developer roles posted, with salaries averaging $260K. This is just $15K less than what AI and research jobs pay. Although the competition is much higher here, with over 700K job seekers looking for software engineering opportunities each month.

3. Hardware & Engineering (incl. Silicon/IC/ASIC/VLSI)

Next are hardware and chip design roles. These specialized positions appear 57 times among the major companies' career pages, with salaries averaging $245K. Beyond corporations, these professionals are in demand by the broader market too, as there are nearly 40K such open jobs available. But despite the high pay and demand, only 33K people look for these opportunities, meaning there are more openings than interested applicants.

4. Product & Program Management

Program and product management is also in high demand, accounting for 1 in every 10 corporate openings. In total, the eight largest companies have 45 available positions for these roles right now. Like hardware work, the broader market shows strong demand in management as well, with almost 27,000 jobs available across America. With salaries averaging $230K, there's no shortage of applicants either: nearly 350K people hunt for these roles every month.

5. Infrastructure / IT / Cloud / Network / Security / Data Center

IT and cloud infrastructure roles round out the top five, accounting for 8.5% of corporate hiring. Right now, there are more than 30 such openings posted by large employers, offering around $235K in salary for work that involves maintaining technical systems and data centers. Apart from the corporate world, another 4,000 similar openings exist across the job market, though with 250K monthly applicants, these positions are hard to land.

George El-Hage, Founder & CEO of Wave Connect, commented on the study.

"We found that more than 1 million Americans are searching for jobs in legal, HR, and compliance fields each month. But these roles make up just 3% of corporate openings, and the broader market doesn't show much demand either. What this tells us is that jobs that were hot a few years ago aren't necessarily hiring now. However, many of us still haven’t realised this. So it might be worth looking at where companies are actually posting openings and adjusting your job search accordingly."