Africa-Press – South-Africa. South African employers are increasingly hunting for tech talent, with certain professionals seeing a particularly sharp growth in demand.
Pnet’s Job Market Trends Report for November 2025, which provides insights into recruitment and employment trends in the South African market, reported some promising trends in hiring activity.
In October 2025, hiring activity increased by 3% year-on-year and 7% month-on-month. Pnet said this overall rise reflects growth across both underlying indicators – vacancy advertising and candidate database searches.
Vacancy advertising increased by 1% year-on-year and 6% month-on-month, showing stronger demand for talent through job postings.
Candidate database searches increased by 6% year-over-year and 9% month-over-month, indicating more active headhunting and direct sourcing by recruiters.
November’s report focused on South Africa’s tech sector. Pnet explained that, after a prolonged decline, the industry is showing its first meaningful signs of recovery.
Over the past five months, more tech vacancies have entered the job market – a notable shift following several years of global and local announcements of large-scale layoffs across IT and technology companies.
“As demand contracted worldwide, tech job opportunities decreased, including in South Africa. Despite this downturn, the need for experienced and specialised tech professionals never disappeared – it simply stabilised at a lower level,” Pnet said.
“The latest data, however, points to renewed momentum.” Until early 2022, Software Developer was the most in-demand job role in South Africa every month.
This changed in March 2022 as tech hiring weakened. Now, for the first time in three and a half years, Software Developer has returned to the top of the list in October 2025 – a strong indicator that demand for tech skills is on the rise.
Year-on-year, tech vacancies have increased by 18%, with a 10% month-on-month rise from September to October 2025, indicating a clear and sustained upward trend in the sector, Pnet said.
Source: Pnet
Tech jobs boom in South Africa
While the entire sector has experienced a rebound, Pnet found that not all tech roles are growing at the same pace. “However, several specialist roles stand out with a significant uptick in vacancy levels since the beginning of 2025,” the report said.
Business Analyst roles showed the strongest growth in the tech space. Since January 2025, vacancies for Business Analysts have doubled, reflecting a 102% increase.
“This highlights the critical role Business Analysts play in bridging business requirements and technology delivery,” the report explained.
Data-focused roles, including Data Scientists, Data Analysts and Data Warehousing Specialists, saw the second biggest uptick.
Vacancies for these professionals have increased by 48% since January 2025, driven by organisations’ growing reliance on data and analytics to inform decision-making, Pnet said.
In third place are Systems/Network Administrators. “Since the start of 2025, vacancies for these infrastructure specialists have risen by 38%, signalling renewed investment in networks, stability, security and systems performance,” Pnet said.
Lastly, vacancies for Software Developers have also increased significantly. Month-on-month, Software Developer roles grew by 8%, and by 34% overall since January 2025.
“While this ranks fourth in relative growth, the impact is substantial given the already high base level of demand,” Pnet said.
“With the recent peak in vacancies, Software Developer has once again become the most in-demand job role in October 2025, underlining its central importance in the tech labour market.”
Pnet explained that hiring is currently concentrated in tech roles where talent shortages are likely to persist.
“The recent rebound in tech hiring is reflected in the roles most frequently advertised across the South African job market,” the report said.
“These positions represent the core skills organisations rely on to drive digital transformation, strengthen data capabilities, modernise systems and deliver technology projects.”
The table below shows the top 10 most in-demand tech positions today in South Africa’s current job market, according to Pnet.
Rank Profession1Business Analyst2Data Analyst3Data Engineer4Software Developer5Full Stack Developer6Java Developer7Data Scientist8Project Manager (IT)9C# Developer10Scrum Master
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