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Job market reports · Skill · October 2026

distributed systems

2,572 live US technical postings name distributed systems in October 2026. Here is which roles ask for it, what those roles pay, and where they are.

Which roles ask for it

Share of the 2,572 postings naming distributed systems that belong to each role. This is the answer to "what would learning this qualify me for".

  1. 1Software Engineer76.1%
  2. 2DevOps / SRE / Platform Engineer8.4%
  3. 3Backend Engineer4.8%
  4. 4AI Engineer2.9%
  5. 5Full-Stack Engineer2.5%
  6. 6Machine Learning Engineer2.3%
  7. 7Data Engineer1.6%

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 distributed systems is named
n = 1,665
10th
$155k
25th
$181k
Median
$208k
75th
$240k
90th
$280k

Where those jobs are

Metro share of the postings naming this skill.

  1. 1San Francisco, CA20.6%
  2. 2Remote14.7%
  3. 3Silicon Valley, CA14.5%
  4. 4New York, NY10.3%
  5. 5Seattle, WA7.1%
  6. 6Boston, MA2.1%
  7. 7Austin, TX1.7%
  8. 8Washington, DC1.7%

How we counted

967,730 live US postings read directly from 82,954 employers’ own careers pages in October 2026 — not from a jobs aggregator, so a role reposted across several sites is counted once. Full methodology, limitations and external checks.