• Tech is hiring again, but the roles and skills in demand look different this time around.
• Atli Thorkelsson, head of network at Redpoint Ventures, put together a slide deck on hiring trends.
• The top of the market is "the most competitive it's been in years," Thorkelsson said.

The tech industry is now split between two starkly different job markets.

On one side, there's a stalled job market where more workers are staying put. On the other there is a rapidly expanding artificial intelligence sector that's reshaping the talent landscape.

To help founders understand the situation, Atli Thorkelsson, head of talent network at Redpoint Ventures, created a slide deck on the state of tech hiring. He presented it at the firm's third annual InfraRed Summit, which brings together founders of up-and-coming companies in cloud infrastructure.

The deck includes data cobbled together from Pave, a compensation management tool; TrueUp, a tech jobs marketplace; and SignalFire, an early-stage venture capital firm.

Thorkelsson notes that the charts throughout the deck represent fast-growing tech firms. Since Redpoint used data from vendors that mainly serve tech clients with open roles, those companies end up overrepresented.

Here's an exclusive look at the 13-slide deck that Redpoint shared with founders.

Tech is hiring again, but the roles and skills in demand look different this time around.

The top of the market is "the most competitive it's been in years," Thorkelsson said.

Throkelsson said more employees are staying put in a tougher job market.

Retention is key. An analysis of pay data suggests companies are burning more equity and cash to keep people happy.

The companies that are hiring are hiring across the board.

The bulk of new hires have gone to AI companies.

Entry-level hiring is on the decline. An efficiency drive means leaner teams packed with battle-tested veterans.

AI companies tilt toward technical talent more than their peers at the same stage.

Premium talent is landing at AI firms, and with that comes premium paychecks.

Machine learning engineers are pulling in more cash and equity than their software engineering counterparts.

Red lines show individual contributors; white lines indicate managers.

Interviews are getting more AI-focused. Candidates are being asked about their AI skills far more often than a year ago.

In recent years, some HR teams toyed with shorter or front-loaded vesting schedules. Now, most are reverting to the standard linear vest, sticking with what candidates already understand, Thorkelsson said.

San Francisco still leads for AI jobs, but New York City is gaining ground as a tech hub.

• Harvey committed $150 million to Azure cloud services over two years.
• The startup, which builds software for lawyers, has partnered with Microsoft since at least 2024.
• Harvey's expansion includes clients like Comcast and Verizon, and new foundation model integrations.

Legaltech startup Harvey has agreed to a two-year, $150 million commitment to use Azure cloud services, according to an internal email seen by Business Insider.

Jay Parikh, who leads Microsoft's new CoreAI unit, included the deal in an internal memo, writing that his unit "announced expanded partnership with Harvey Al with a 2-year $150M MACC and $3.5M unified expansion." Parikh joined Microsoft in October to lead a new engineering group responsible for building its artificial-intelligence tools.

Microsoft declined to comment, and Harvey declined to comment on the agreement.

MACC, or Microsoft Azure Consumption Commitment, is an agreement customers make to spend a specific amount on Azure for a period of time, often for a discount.

Harvey, which builds chatbots and agents tailored for legal and professional services, is scaling up and entering the enterprise market. It's adding legal teams at Comcast and Verizon as clients, while developing bespoke workflow software for large law firm customers.

It has raised more than $500 million from investors, including Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, and OpenAI Startup Fund, a Harvey spokesperson told BI.

Harvey has closely partnered with Microsoft since at least early 2024. That year, the company deployed its platform on Microsoft Azure, followed by a Word plug-in designed for lawyers. It also introduced a SharePoint integration, allowing users to securely access files from their Microsoft storage system through Harvey's apps.

For years, Harvey, founded in 2022, ran its platform on OpenAI models, primarily because they're hosted in Microsoft's data centers, Harvey CEO Winston Weinberg told BI last month. Law firms handle highly sensitive information and trusted Microsoft to keep it safe, Weinberg said.

"Law firms refused to use anything that wasn't through Azure," Weinberg said. That's now changing, he said, as vendors like Anthropic build the features enterprises require.

Last week, Harvey expanded its use of foundation models to Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude.

Still, Harvey's $150 million Azure deal signals it's not backing away from Microsoft anytime soon. The company's growing cloud footprint suggests that, while other partners are gaining traction with the legaltech start, Azure remains integral to Harvey's growth for now.

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