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Being new to the job market is never easy. But in a field like software engineering, it can feel especially daunting as AI takes over many tasks that used to belong to entry-level workers.Some companies have grown cautious about hiring recent graduates as they figure out how AI will reshape their teams.
Others, however, are celebrating the new wave of talent.Leaders at Blackstone and Salesforce have told Business Insider that the entry-level talent pool is particularly strong and stands out with its AI fluency.Here are seven companies, including major tech firms such as IBM, LinkedIn, and Dropbox, who have increased — or plan to increase — hiring of entry-level developers.LinkedIn is planning on expanding its entry-level engineering internship program by 40%, compared to the year before, Erin Scruggs, vice president and head of global talent acquisition, told Business Insider."We're working closely with our engineering leaders to keep investing in early-career talent, especially engineers who are AI-native and bring a builder mindset," Scruggs said in an email.The company said it plans to adjust its hiring mix to "open up more opportunities" for the next generation of engineers, while continuing to bring in experienced technical leaders.IBM is tripling its entry-level hiring in 2026, including in software engineering, according to Nickle LaMoreaux, chief human resources officer at IBM.At a recent conference hosted by media and insights company Charter, LaMoreaux said that talent professionals will have to "rewrite every job," and communicate the value of entry-level workers to their business because AI can do many of the jobs that entry-level workers were doing a few years ago."If you're going to convince your business leaders that you need to make this investment because it's an investment for the future, then you need to be able to show: What is the real value these individuals can bring now?" she said.Software developers in 2024 or even 2025 would spend 30 to 40 hours a week coding, LaMoreaux said. Now, she said, they do coding and testing with AI assistance — and they're also building new products, gathering client feedback, and talking to marketing teams."I think the companies three to five years from now that are going to be the most successful are those companies that doubled down on entry-level hiring in this environment," LaMoreaux said.The CEO of IT-services company Cognizant previously told Business Insider that he expects the entry-level hiring space to grow — and now the company is acting on that. The company told Business Insider it's quadrupling its pipeline of entry-level talent with a plan to hire up to 2,000 early-career talent by the end of the year."Cognizant believes early-in-career talent have a competitive edge in this dynamic moment as AI-natives and lifelong learners," Kathy Diaz, chief people officer at Cognizant, told Business Insider in an email.The company added that it has various workforce development programs to support early-career candidates, including its Fusion Internship program, which is a project-based internship.Cloud cybersecurity firm Cloudflare announced plans in September to hire 1,111 interns in 2026 to "train the next generation of technology leaders." The plan is a significant increase from its formerly 60-person program, and the aim is to provide students with "hands-on experience and mentorship," the company said in its announcement.The program "offers a chance to work on projects and ship updates that directly impact millions of Internet users, from securing network infrastructure to developing cutting-edge server-less applications," the company said.Cloudflare said it would also make developer tools available to US university students at no cost for a year.The move comes after the company noted that entry-level technical opportunities have declined across the industry."Without hiring emerging talent, industries risk a critical shortage of experienced workers in the future," the company said.Dropbox said it's expanding its internship and new-graduate programs by 25% to capitalize on younger workers' AI fluency. That includes engineering hires, the company told Business Insider.Melanie Rosenwasser, chief people officer at Dropbox, said that when it comes to entry-level workers using AI, "it's like they're biking in the Tour de France, and the rest of us still have training wheels," Bloomberg reported.Cybersecurity firm ThreatLocker said it plans to nearly double its headcount to 1,200 employees over the next 18 months. The company said a significant number of those hires will be entry-level, expanding its talent pool of junior developers.The CEO and cofounder, Danny Jenkins, said in a statement to Business Insider that it maintains a highly demanding training standard for engineers at every level to "reflect the real pressure of defending critical systems." The company has experienced a spike in growth as it responds to a new age of threats in the AI era, the CEO previously told Business Insider.The company also offers a free, in-person, 60-hour cybersecurity bootcamp to immerse college students and recent grads in "live fire" training scenarios.Invisible Technologies, an AI software platform for businesses, said it has hired 160 engineers in the past 18 months. Roughly half of them were entry-level or "quite junior," a company spokesperson said.The CEO, Matt Fitzpatrick, told Business Insider that he has found entry-level engineers to be "some of the most thoughtful about using gen AI, because they've grown up using this in their schooling." He said the entry-level talent pool is "incredibly proficient" and "more useful than ever."
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