Australia's tech sector has shed more jobs in the first ten weeks of 2026 than it did in all of 2025. The numbers are hard to ignore: WiseTech Global cut 2,000 positions, Atlassian let go of 1,600 (around 480 of them in Australia), Telstra dropped 650, CBA axed roughly 300, and Optus trimmed another 200-300. That puts the running total above 4,450 — compared with 874 for the entire previous year.
Sydney now sits third on the global tech layoffs list, behind San Francisco and Seattle. And across every single one of these cuts, the reason given is the same: artificial intelligence.
What's actually happening
These aren't scattered redundancies. They represent a deliberate shift in how Australian companies are thinking about headcount and productivity.
WiseTech's CEO was blunt about it — "the era of manually writing code as the core act of engineering is over." The company plans to halve its product, development and customer service teams over a two-year restructure. Staff who remain will spend their time "coordinating across a swarm of AI agents" rather than writing code line by line.
At Atlassian, the 10% workforce reduction is being framed as a pivot toward AI-driven sales and enterprise products. CBA's cuts landed mostly in technology roles, along with some in retail banking and HR. Telstra and Optus are running similar restructures under the banner of "reshaping how we work."
The pattern is consistent: companies are finding that teams equipped with AI tools can produce the same output with fewer people. Industry data suggests developers using AI coding assistants produce 40-55% more code per sprint while maintaining comparable quality. In practical terms, a team of ten with AI tools can match the output of fifteen without them.
Which roles are in the firing line?
Not all tech jobs carry the same risk. Looking at our occupation data — drawn from Jobs and Skills Australia and the Australian Bureau of Statistics — the picture varies sharply depending on what you actually do each day.
Highest AI exposure in tech:
Software and applications programmers sit at an AI risk score of 6.7 out of 10. That's high, and it tracks with the real-world cuts at WiseTech and Atlassian. The Jobs and Skills Australia automation exposure rating for this role is 0.63 — meaning 63% of a typical programmer's tasks could potentially be automated. There are 195,400 people in this role across Australia, earning a median of $2,537 per week.
ICT business and systems analysts score 6.4 out of 10, with 51,500 employed nationally. Their automation exposure sits at 0.58, meaning more than half of their typical tasks are AI-automatable. ICT support and test engineers score 6.2.
Beyond tech, the clerical roles are even more exposed:
General clerks carry an AI risk score of 7.0 out of 10 — and there are 286,600 of them working across Australia. Their automation exposure rating of 0.71 is among the highest of any occupation. Call and contact centre workers score 7.4 out of 10, with 75% of their tasks flagged for potential automation.
These aren't hypothetical numbers. They reflect the specific task composition of each role, assessed against what current AI systems can do.
The part that doesn't add up
Here's where it gets interesting. Despite cutting thousands of positions, Australia's tech sector is still growing. Software programmer roles are projected to grow 15.7% over five years and 26.7% over ten years. The occupation is officially listed as being in shortage by Jobs and Skills Australia.
How can an occupation be shedding jobs and facing a skills shortage at the same time?
Because the jobs being cut and the jobs being created aren't the same jobs. The demand is shifting from people who write routine code to people who can architect systems, manage AI toolchains, and work in areas where AI still falls short. Database and systems administrators and ICT security specialists — who score a lower 5.5 on AI risk — are in shortage and growing at 14% over five years. Cybersecurity and cloud skills remain in high demand even as other tech roles shrink.
New software engineering job postings dropped 15% in the first two months of 2026 compared to the same period last year. But AI-related roles are the fastest growing category in Australian tech. The sector isn't dying — it's splitting into two tracks: roles that AI handles better, and roles that require human judgement alongside AI.
What the government data says
Jobs and Skills Australia's Generative AI Capacity Study — the most comprehensive Australian research on this topic — found that AI is far more likely to augment work than replace it outright. Their whole-of-labour-market analysis concluded that while 32% of Australian jobs have some tasks that AI could perform, pure automation is the less common outcome.
The study found the biggest automation exposure in clerical and administrative roles, where routine, rules-based tasks dominate. The lowest exposure sits with physical, hands-on work. Electricians, for example, score just 2.8 out of 10 on AI risk — and they're in shortage with 195,900 employed nationally. Plumbers sit at the same 2.8 score.
The study also flagged that older workers, First Nations Australians, and people with disability face disproportionate risk because they're concentrated in more exposed occupations and may face digital access gaps.
What this means if you work in tech
The 4,450 jobs lost aren't coming back in their original form. But the data doesn't support the idea that tech careers are finished in Australia. What it does support is that the nature of tech work is changing fast — possibly faster than any other sector.
If you're a software developer, the message from the data is specific: the value of writing routine code is falling, but demand for people who can design systems, evaluate AI outputs, handle edge cases, and work across complex architectures is growing. The median weekly pay for software programmers remains $2,537 — well above the national median — and ten-year employment projections are still positive.
If you're in a support, testing, or customer service role within tech, the exposure is higher. These roles have more tasks that map neatly to what AI systems do well: processing structured information, following decision trees, and handling repetitive queries.
The bigger picture beyond tech
Tech is getting the headlines, but the highest AI risk scores on our data aren't in tech at all. Keyboard operators (8.0), telemarketers (8.0), filing and registry clerks (7.5), and HR clerks (7.5) all score higher than software programmers. Call centre workers at 7.4 are in that same bracket.
The tech layoffs are visible because they're being announced by household-name companies. The shifts in clerical and administrative work are happening more quietly — through attrition, restructures, and gradual automation rather than mass announcements.
According to one analysis, 44% of companies now cite AI as the primary driver for workforce changes. At the same time, 74% of ANZ organisations report that AI has created new roles even as it eliminated others.
Check your own risk
The most useful thing you can do is look at the data for your specific occupation — not tech as a whole, not "AI jobs" as a category, but your actual role.
Take our personal AI risk quiz to get a quick read on where you sit. Or browse the full occupation rankings to see how your profession compares with others across Australia. You can also compare two occupations side by side to weigh up your options.
The Australian tech layoffs of 2026 are real, and they're significant. But a headline number doesn't tell you whether your job is in the firing line — the task-level data does.