Malt Tech Trends 2026
Deep-dive Data platform
The enterprise data platform landscape is consolidating while expanding into operational use cases. Power BI commands over one-third of BI demand as organizations favor integrated ecosystems over multi-provider strategies.
Meanwhile, data platforms are evolving beyond analytics into real-time operational systems (event streaming up 328%) while industrializing operations, with cloud infrastructure demand increasing over 2000%.
Power BI still dominates while dbt demand springs +42%
Enterprise data platform balancing between consolidation and innovation
The enterprise data platform landscape is consolidating while expanding into operational use cases. Power BI commands over one-third of BI demand as organizations favor integrated ecosystems over multi-provider strategies.
Data transformation has industrialized around DBT (present in 33% of warehouse projects), creating the Analytics Engineering discipline. Meanwhile, data platforms are evolving beyond analytics into real-time operational systems (event streaming up 328%) while industrializing operations, with cloud infrastructure demand increasing over 2000%.
Top data trends for 2026 :
from Microsoft’s integrated stack to Kafka’s surge
How data experts are transforming the tech landscape
The Analytics engineer
Experience of analytics experts
Top growing skills in supply
Explore Data experts on Malt
Market expert
It’s an exciting time: data platforms are entering a new dimension with DBT’s industrialized transformation, Analytics Engineering became a real discipline, and data platforms expanding beyond analytics into real-time operations. It is a strong signal that they have become critical infrastructure for operational use-cases and AI at scale.
The 2026 tech trends deep-dives
Key insights
How Europe’s top independent talents are shaping the tech landscape.
Key insights
How Europe’s top independent talents are shaping the tech landscape.
Our research is based on 2,5 million searches on the Malt platform across our community of 1 million freelancers, including 250,000 tech freelancers, and +90,000 companies.
Cloud & Infra
It is now AI-driven cloud evolution, with AI workloads cost exploding.
Cloud & Infra
From migration to AI-driven cost and architecture
Organizations are now architecting specifically for AI workloads rather than general-purpose migration. Generative AI on Cloud demand rose +96%, while LLM-specific infrastructure projects increased by +154%.AI workloads have also driven FinOps from a peripheral exercise into a core engineering mandate, with +72% in dedicated projects.
Cybersecurity
With AI penetration, security is at the core of any tech project.
Cybersecurity
A convergence crisis, driven by AI, is reshaping the GRC landscape
The significant growth in GRC demand — +31% ISO-27001, +229% ISO 7816, coupled with slower growth in the number of freelancers, has led to strong market tension and a scarcity of talent in the cybersecurity domain.
Adding to this, the rise of AI is forcing a rapid evolution of both the discipline and the required profiles.
Low-Code
Automation and low-code tools now empowering senior tech experts.
Low-Code
Low-code tools are now empowering tech experts, while software programming landscape is transforming.
AI
Agentic maturity is the most significant signal in our 2026 data.
AI
Coming soon
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