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Book a demo (opens in a new tab)Hire a software engineer by testing for the work O*NET records as core to Software Developers: turning user needs into a design that fits time and cost, building and modifying the software, and testing it. Write the job description around those outcomes and the stack your team runs, then search every title candidates use, including Software Development Engineer, Application Developer and Software Architect.
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A software engineer at a technology company does the work O*NET records for Software Developers (O*NET 15-1252.00). The core tasks, ranked by importance, start with these:
A software engineer job description works best when each requirement is an outcome the person has delivered, not a list of adjectives. Name the languages, databases and cloud services your team actually runs, and leave out the rest.
O*NET's technology list for Software Developers includes AJAX, Amazon DynamoDB and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. Treat those as examples of the category; your own stack decides the list.
Software engineer candidates list themselves under several titles that O*NET maps to the same occupation. A search on the exact phrase alone misses many of them.
| Title | Include in a software engineer search? |
|---|---|
| Software Developer | Yes, the most common alternative |
| Software Development Engineer | Yes, often used by large product companies |
| Application Developer | Yes, common in enterprise and IT teams |
| Developer | Yes, but pair it with a language or stack to cut noise |
| Software Architect | Only for senior roles with design ownership |
| DevOps Engineer (Development Operations Engineer) | Only when the role includes release and infrastructure work |
| Infrastructure Engineer | Only when the role includes release and infrastructure work |
0.35% of sampled Claude.ai conversations in May 2026 were about the tasks of the O*NET occupation behind this role, according to the Anthropic Economic Index. In those conversations, 60.79% asked Claude to complete the task directly (automation) and 39.21% worked with it iteratively (augmentation).
Those figures describe how people used Claude, not how many software engineering jobs exist or will change. For hiring, the practical step is to ask each candidate how they check code an AI assistant wrote before it ships.
Screen software engineer applicants with questions whose answers can be checked: which systems they changed in production, what broke, and how they found out. Questions tied to the core tasks above separate builders from people who only list tools.
