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AWS to Hire 11,000 Junior Engineers in 2026, Citing AI Tool Adaptability

June 29, 2026 at 01:31 EDT

Recruiting & HR
AI Agents
Sales & Business

AWS CEO Matt Garman said Amazon will hire 11,000 interns and early-career software development engineers (SDEs) worldwide in 2026, pointing to younger talent's adaptability with new AI tools and fresh ideas while pushing back on the view that AI will eliminate entry-level jobs.

2026 · AWS

Amazon Will Hire 11,000 Junior Workers — Betting On The AI-Native Generation

As fears grow that AI is wiping out entry-level jobs, AWS CEO Matt Garman says the company will keep recruiting interns and new grads globally in 2026 — "wipe out" and "change," he argues, are not the same thing.

11,000

interns & early-career hires globally in 2026 — mainly software engineers

Global

scope of the program, in line with prior years' volume

software developers employed now than two years ago

Big tech is leaning into junior talent

Headcount moves for entry-level / new-grad hiring

11,000

AWS / Amazon
interns & grads, 2026

20,000

Cognizant
new grads, planned 2025

3×

IBM
tripled entry-level hiring

Block columns scaled to headcount; IBM shown as a relative multiple (units differ).

The argument

"Wipe out and change are different things — like Excel transformed manual calculation work rather than erasing it."

Energy & fresh perspective First AI-native coding cohort Adapt fast to new tools

Supporters

Hiring an AI-native generation is logical — junior developers are the first cohort fluent in AI coding tools and open to new processes.

Skeptics

Recruiting while broadly cutting corporate roles feels contradictory — and it's unproven whether AI will shrink entry-level work.

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