The tech market can be an unforgiving place for entry-level talent. Entry-level tech job postings in the US have plummeted by 67% in the last two years. Nearly 130,000 tech employees have lost their jobs just this year, and artificial intelligence is believed to have cut junior job postings by up to 9%. It’s brutal out there.
In the ServiceNow ecosystem, the story isn’t as clear-cut. With some professionals citing challenges landing permanent roles and some recruiters maintaining that demand is high for skilled professionals, it’s difficult to concretely picture the landscape. That being said, this guide should hopefully get you closer to understanding what the market looks like for entry-level professionals, taking into account different perspectives and regions. Let’s dive in.
The State of the 2026/2027 Tech Market
As we approach the final quarter of 2026, the tech market finds itself in a unique position. It’s faced accelerating layoffs, a sharp decline in entry-level job postings, and near-total disruption from AI. We hear a lot about these factors in the market – and for very good reasons – but it’s important to consider the other side of the story.
For example, engineering roles are reportedly up 30% since the start of 2026, with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projecting that software developer roles will grow 15% through 2034. Although the number of layoffs has increased, it reportedly has not impacted the rate of tech hiring, which has allegedly gone up.
What About ServiceNow?
Over in the ServiceNow-specific corner of the tech job market, the scenario isn’t too dissimilar. According to findings from Pearson Carter, a global technology recruitment company, “ServiceNow has moved from an ITSM platform to an enterprise-wide operating layer spanning IT, HR, CSM and beyond – and demand for talent has scaled with it.”
In 2026, organizations are expanding their recruitment scope beyond basic administrative and development roles. Instead, they are actively seeking specialists capable of architecting cross-functional workflow solutions while integrating AI into core operational processes.
For the UK specifically, AI is having a particularly pertinent impact on roles. According to a report by ServiceNow and Pearson, more than 1.63M roles in the UK will be impacted by agentic AI by 2030.
Job postings for ServiceNow roles have seemingly increased over the last year in the UK (see graph below), with contract roles seeing a sharper increase than permanent roles. At present, similar data for the US is not widely available, although according to workforce research company Revelio Labs, ServiceNow’s active job postings rose 11% in 2026 to 3,133, with new postings per month climbing from 1,462 in 2023 to 1,974 in 2026.
It is widely believed that AI is influencing a lot of this hiring, with the demand for platform-specific AI skills on the rise.
On the supply side, senior roles like Certified Master Architects are scarce, and this is where demand is the highest. According to Pearson Carter, there are fewer than 250 CSAs worldwide, and that scarcity permeates through solutions architects, platform owners, and practice leads.
“These senior delivery profiles are the hardest to hire, the most exposed to counteroffers, and the roles where paying below the median most often stalls a search,” they wrote.
Community Sentiment
The job market continues to be a point of contention for ServiceNow employees, who will often take to Reddit and LinkedIn to share their stories, challenges, and questions with the community in order to get a larger scope of the situation.
According to one Reddit thread, demand does appear to be real, but largely only for contract roles or partners – mirroring what current hiring data also shows.
“For contract roles it’s decent,” one person wrote. “For [permanent] positions, a lot of companies outsource and may only have one to two onshore positions.”
Another thread considered whether or not the market was saturated, with a poster writing that they had applied to more than 500 jobs across LinkedIn, Naukri, and other platforms but hadn’t even received a call for an interview.
Possible reasons as to why this may have been the case include a rise in IT offshoring – a market that is expected to reach $1.24B by 2034 – a demand for certain certifications, and a landscape that has gradually become more selective over time.
“The job pool has not shrunk; it is more selective,” one person wrote. “I don’t see any generic skilled hiring anymore; it’s all in these specialty areas,” another wrote.
Many agreed that the market was indeed saturated, but with a specific type of talent – largely developers without specialized ServiceNow skills. The saturation rate also appears to be higher in India, from which this poster originated, despite the fact that a large majority of outsourced work is centered in India.
The Reality for Entry-Level Professionals
Taking all of this into account, it can be easy to believe that the ServiceNow market is inhospitable for entry-level professionals. However, Thomas Moewe, a ServiceNow M&A Advisor, told NowBen that he thinks this is not the case.
“I don’t think of enterprise workflow platforms like ServiceNow as a technology stack,” he said. “Rather, I see them as where work (people, process, data) functions and flows.” “Hence, I believe that it is a great place for entry-level professionals who want to index deeply into an industry or a domain.”
Professionals with experience will almost always get the upper hand when it comes to hiring in any sector or vertical, but Thomas explained that the experience that comes with understanding that meta-layer of the enterprise will be “incredibly valuable regardless of future technology shifts in the market.”
He also said he couldn’t see a scenario where entry-level talent was no longer needed, but that the entry point will likely become more “upstream” in the value chain than it has been in the past, so the way professionals are educated on entering the workforce will need to change.
“My advice to entry-level professionals is to over-index on industry- and domain-specific experience and knowledge and avoid spending time on the agnostic layers of the enterprise,” he said.
Final Thoughts
There is no denying that for many entry-level professionals, the tech market of today can be a tough one to enter, with factors like AI reshaping the market, saturation, and socioeconomic trends. But at least in the ServiceNow space, it’s certainly not impossible.
Entry-level professionals likely need to focus on the “work smarter, not harder” approach to finding work, honing the specific skills that employers are actively looking for. The ServiceNow landscape still has a lot of potential, even for entry-level talent – especially if they can show a sound understanding of the market and the impact they can have on business outcomes, while demonstrating competence in relevant technology practices.