Only 5.2% of open jobs at tech and product companies are labelled junior, entry-level, graduate, intern or associate. Across 15,849 live job posts from 133 employers' own careers pages, we found 831 junior-labelled roles against 6,226 senior ones — about 7½ senior jobs for every junior job. In product, design and engineering the ratio is 14 to 1.
If you're trying to get your first tech job and it feels like every listing wants "3–5 years of experience", you're not imagining it. Here is what the data says, where the openings actually are, and what to do about it.
Correction, 26 September 2026: the first version of this article, published on 25 September, miscounted internships. Our title matching counted words such as "International" and "Internal" as internships and missed titles containing "Internship". The corrected figures are 5.2% junior (previously 4.3%), 1.8% internships (previously 2.5%) and a 14-to-1 ratio in engineering (previously 27-to-1). The conclusion is unchanged; the gap is smaller than we first reported.
- 15,849 open jobs analysed from 133 employers' careers pages (26 September 2026)
- 5.2% are labelled junior, entry-level, graduate, intern, associate, apprentice or trainee (831 jobs)
- 39.3% are labelled senior, staff, lead, principal, head, director or VP (6,226 jobs)
- 1.8% are internships (284 roles); only 86 titles say "graduate", "new grad", "early career" or "entry"
- Product & design and engineering: about 14 senior roles for every junior one
What we found
We sorted every job title into three groups using the words in the title itself:
| Group | Title contains | Jobs | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senior | senior, sr., staff, principal, lead, head, director, VP | 6,226 | 39.3% |
| No level | no level word at all ("Account Executive", "Data Analyst") | 8,792 | 55.5% |
| Junior | junior, jr., entry, graduate, new grad, early career, intern, internship, associate, apprentice, trainee | 831 | 5.2% |
Two things stand out. First, the senior group is about 7½ times the size of the junior group. Second, more than half of all roles don't say a level at all — and many of those still ask for several years of experience in the description. So 5.2% is the share of jobs that openly welcome early-career people; it is not the only door, but it is a small one.
The gap is widest in product, design and engineering
| Job family | Open jobs | Junior | Senior | Senior per junior |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Product & design | 1,368 | 4.2% | 60.9% | 14× |
| Engineering | 4,780 | 3.8% | 53.0% | 14× |
| Data & analytics | 1,118 | 4.7% | 49.5% | 10× |
| Marketing | 474 | 6.5% | 50.0% | 8× |
| Sales & accounts | 2,670 | 4.0% | 25.2% | 6× |
| People & recruiting | 382 | 6.8% | 37.4% | 6× |
| Customer support & success | 797 | 6.3% | 33.2% | 5× |
| Operations & finance | 1,024 | 13.9% | 41.8% | 3× |
If you're early in your career and flexible about where you start, the data points to operations and finance (about one junior role in seven), customer support and success, people and recruiting, and sales as the most open doors. Product, design and engineering are the hardest to enter directly, which is why support, QA, operations and internships are such common first steps into those fields.
Why companies post so few junior roles
Companies rarely explain their hiring mix, but three explanations fit the pattern:
- Small teams can't afford training time. A company hiring one engineer this quarter wants someone who needs no ramp-up.
- CVs are a poor signal for beginners. With no track record to read, a CV from a new graduate looks like every other CV. Hiring someone "senior" feels safer than guessing.
- Levels are inflated. Many "senior" roles are really mid-level jobs with a better title to attract applicants.
The second point is the one you can actually do something about.
What to do if you're looking for your first role
You can't change the ratio, but you can change what an employer sees when your application lands.
- Apply to the roles with no level in the title. More than half of all jobs don't say "senior". Read the description: if it asks for skills you can demonstrate rather than a fixed number of years, apply.
- Replace "experience" with evidence. A short work sample — a SQL query that answers a real business question, a support reply to an angry customer, a one-page product critique — tells a hiring manager more than a line on a CV. Our skill packs are a free way to find your gaps first.
- Target the open doors, then move. Support, QA, operations and implementation roles open to juniors more often and are well-worn routes into engineering, data and product.
- Practise the interview before you get it. When junior roles are this scarce, the candidates who get offers are the ones who answer clearly and specifically. Practise real questions for your target role — privately, as many times as you like.
Methodology and limitations
- Data: 15,849 open job posts collected on 26 September 2026 from the public careers feeds (Greenhouse, Lever, Ashby and SmartRecruiters) of 133 employers, mostly technology and product companies. At most 300 jobs are collected per employer, so the largest employers are capped.
- Classification: based on job titles only, matching whole words from the lists in the first table. Senior words are checked first, so "Associate Director" counts as senior; "lead generation" is not treated as a senior title. Descriptions were not analysed, so jobs with no level in the title may still require years of experience.
- Families: a job can match more than one family (for example "Product Data Analyst"), so family totals add up to more than 15,849.
- Not a sample of the whole labour market: these are tech and product employers with public careers feeds. Retail, healthcare, government and small businesses are not included.
We will refresh these numbers every quarter at this address. Journalists and researchers are welcome to use the charts and figures with a link to this page as the source. Questions about the data: hello@provitude.com.