The U.S. technology sector is sending mixed signals, as companies trim payrolls for AI-driven efficiency while posting more tech jobs than in years. An analysis of roughly 850,000 U.S. tech job postings from January 2025 to March 2026 by Oxylabs Research found hiring accelerated despite layoffs, with the first quarter of 2026 accounting for 39% of all postings—3.7 times more activity than the same period a year earlier. Employers are investing in professionals with cloud infrastructure, DevOps, and enterprise data skills rather than just new AI tools. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the most requested skill, appearing in 30% of postings, followed by Microsoft Azure at 24%, Git at 21%, Excel at 15%, Google Cloud Platform (GCP) at 14%, Kubernetes at 14%, Docker at 13%, Power BI at 9%, Terraform at 8%, and Tableau at 7.5%. Nearly 42% of postings required knowledge of at least one major cloud platform, with AWS appearing 1.2 times more frequently than Azure and 2.1 times more often than GCP. AWS and Azure co-appeared in 15% of postings, the highest pairing. Snowflake appeared in roughly 6% of postings versus BigQuery’s 2%, and Power BI was mentioned 1.2 times more than Tableau. Excel remains a "hyg