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Job market reports · Skill · September 2026

system design

352 live US technical postings name system design in September 2026. Here is which roles ask for it, what those roles pay, and where they are.

Which roles ask for it

Share of the 352 postings naming system design that belong to each role. This is the answer to "what would learning this qualify me for".

  1. 1Software Engineer73.3%
  2. 2Full-Stack Engineer6%
  3. 3Backend Engineer5.7%
  4. 4AI Engineer5.1%
  5. 5Machine Learning Engineer2.6%
  6. 6DevOps / SRE / Platform Engineer2.3%
  7. 7Security Engineer1.7%
  8. 8Data Engineer1.1%

What postings asking for it pay

Across every role, for the postings that both name this skill and disclose a salary. A skill does not cause a salary — senior roles ask for more of everything — so read this as association, not as a raise.

Disclosed pay where system design is named
n = 198
10th
$145k
25th
$186k
Median
$215k
75th
$246k
90th
$274k

Where those jobs are

Metro share of the postings naming this skill.

  1. 1San Francisco, CA21%
  2. 2Remote13.1%
  3. 3New York, NY11.6%
  4. 4Silicon Valley, CA10.5%
  5. 5Seattle, WA6.3%
  6. 6Boston, MA2.8%
  7. 7Washington, DC2.3%
  8. 8Austin, TX1.4%

How we counted

668,970 live US postings read directly from 79,892 employers’ own careers pages in September 2026 — not from a jobs aggregator, so a role reposted across several sites is counted once. Full methodology, limitations and external checks.