Chef jobs in 2026 — demand, top roles hiring, and related skills

As of 2026-09-30, Chef appears in 686 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the past 90 days — DevOps Engineer has the most postings mentioning Chef, with demand share up 4.1% vs the prior 4 weeks.

Last updated · 90d ending 2026-09-30

Postings · last 90 days
686
Demand vs prior month
up 4.1% vs the prior 4 weeks
Top role · 17.9% of skill postings
Top hiring metro
Bengaluru

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Frequently asked questions about Chef

+Is Chef in demand in 2026?

Yes. Chef appears in 686 job postings indexed by Skillenai over the 90 days ending 2026-09-30. DevOps Engineer accounts for the most postings mentioning Chef (17.9% of all postings mentioning Chef).

+What jobs require Chef?

According to the Skillenai jobs index over the 90 days ending 2026-09-30, among roles with at least 20 postings, the highest shares mentioning Chef are DevOps Architect (23.1% of that role’s postings mention Chef), DevOps Platform Engineer (19.4% of that role’s postings mention Chef), Linux Systems Engineer (15.6% of that role’s postings mention Chef).

+What skills are commonly paired with Chef?

Across job postings indexed by Skillenai (90 days ending 2026-09-30), Chef most often appears alongside Ansible, Python, Terraform, Puppet, Kubernetes.

+Where is Chef most in demand?

As of 2026-09-30, the metro areas posting the most jobs requiring Chef are Bengaluru, Pune, New York City, San Francisco, Toronto, according to the Skillenai jobs index.

+How can I keep up with new Chef content and jobs?

Skillenai indexes news, blog posts, and research papers mentioning Chef alongside the jobs index. You can subscribe to a daily email digest of new Chef content from your Skillenai account.

+Which skills come before and after Chef?

The skill-flow chart shows skills documented in adjacent positions across observed employer changes. An outgoing skill is documented in the following position but not the preceding one. These are ideas to explore, not proven prerequisites, acquisition dates, or levels of mastery. Each ribbon counts employer moves with that skill pair; one move can contribute several pairs.

Weekly indexed postings requiring Chef — last 90 days

Salary distribution

Box = 25th–75th percentile · tick = median · whisker = 10th–90th · USD, annualized

Career paths around Chef

Skills documented before and after this skill across employer changes.

Historical career profiles · all locations

Skills before Chef

Before ChefJenkins → Chef: 43 observed employer moves with this skill pairterraform → Chef: 25 observed employer moves with this skill pairAWS → Chef: 24 observed employer moves with this skill pairdocker → Chef: 23 observed employer moves with this skill pairAnsible → Chef: 23 observed employer moves with this skill pairpython → Chef: 21 observed employer moves with this skill pairkubernetes → Chef: 20 observed employer moves with this skill pairbash → Chef: 15 observed employer moves with this skill pairChefJenkins: 43 movesJenkins43 movesterraform: 25 movesterraform25 movesAWS: 24 movesAWS24 movesdocker: 23 movesdocker23 movesAnsible: 23 movesAnsible23 movespython: 21 movespython21 moveskubernetes: 20 moveskubernetes20 movesbash: 15 movesbash15 moves

Skills after Chef

After ChefChef → Ansible: 25 observed employer moves with this skill pairChef → kubernetes: 24 observed employer moves with this skill pairChef → python: 24 observed employer moves with this skill pairChef → terraform: 22 observed employer moves with this skill pairChef → docker: 20 observed employer moves with this skill pairChef → AWS: 17 observed employer moves with this skill pairChef → ci/cd: 16 observed employer moves with this skill pairChef → RDS: 14 observed employer moves with this skill pairChefAnsible: 25 movesAnsible25 moveskubernetes: 24 moveskubernetes24 movespython: 24 movespython24 movesterraform: 22 movesterraform22 movesdocker: 20 movesdocker20 movesAWS: 17 movesAWS17 movesci/cd: 16 movesci/cd16 movesRDS: 14 movesRDS14 moves
How to read this chart · view counts

Each side is an independent set of observed employer moves, not the same people followed through three stages. Ribbon widths compare move counts within that side. Internal moves are not included.

The following position documents a skill that the preceding position does not. Skills must be linked to both positions, with clear dates and no overlap. One move can connect several skill pairs. These patterns suggest skills to explore; they do not establish prerequisites, when a skill was learned, or a higher skill level.

Source: Skillenai talent graph, historical career profiles. Historical descriptions and coverage can change. Only the leading published connections are shown.

Observed connections and move counts
ConnectionMoves
Before: Jenkins43
Before: terraform25
Before: AWS24
Before: docker23
Before: Ansible23
Before: python21
Before: kubernetes20
Before: bash15
After: Ansible25
After: kubernetes24
After: python24
After: terraform22
After: docker20
After: AWS17
After: ci/cd16
After: RDS14

Roles most likely to require Chef

Among roles with at least 20 postings in the same period.

RolePostings mentioning skill% of role postings mentioning skill
DevOps Architect623.1%
DevOps Platform Engineer619.4%
Linux Systems Engineer515.6%
Professional Services Engineer814.5%
Linux Infrastructure Engineer311.1%
Cloud DevOps Engineer89.6%
CloudOps Engineer39.4%
Reliability Engineer29.1%
Storage Architect28.7%
Cloud Operations Engineer48.5%

Roles with the most Chef postings

RolePostings mentioning skillShare of skill postings
DevOps Engineer12317.9%
Site Reliability Engineer10214.9%
Software Engineer7010.2%
Platform Engineer233.4%
Systems Engineer202.9%
Cloud Engineer142.0%
Infrastructure Engineer111.6%
Cloud DevOps Engineer81.2%
DevSecOps Engineer81.2%
Professional Services Engineer81.2%

Top companies posting jobs requiring Chef

Employers ranked by indexed job postings in the last 90 days.

Top companies posting jobs requiring Chef
CompanyPostings · 90 days
Barclays26
CrowdStrike20
Mastercard19
Devoteam14
Disney13
Adobe11
Anduril Industries10
Gitlab10
Cloudflare10
360 IT Professionals9

Job postings indexed over the past 90 days, grouped by resolved employer. Counts are postings, not hires. Companies without a published page appear without a link.

Top metros hiring for Chef

NamePostingsShare
Bengaluru294.2%
Pune263.8%
New York City152.2%
San Francisco152.2%
Toronto131.9%
Dublin121.7%
Chicago111.6%
Austin101.5%
Hyderabad101.5%

Skills commonly paired with Chef

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How this was computed

Counts derive from the Skillenai jobs index over the 90 days ending 2026-09-30. Skills are resolved against the Skillenai canonical taxonomy, so the same entity is counted whether a posting writes 'Python', 'Python 3', or 'python'. Role prevalence divides postings mentioning Chef by all postings for each role in the same window, ranking roles with at least 20 postings. Role distribution divides each role’s Chef postings by all Chef postings, including postings without a role. Shares need not sum to 100% for the displayed roles. Pages refresh weekly (or daily for the top-50 most-requested skills). Adjusted posting share: 0.3% to 0.3%. Demand share change is the relative percentage change between these adjusted shares. Each employer-and-ATS group has at least 10 postings in each 90-day window; its earlier posting count supplies the same weight in both windows. The panel includes 2,596 identified employers and covers 68% of earlier and 72% of latest indexed postings. Windows: 2026-06-02 to 2026-08-31 and 2026-06-30 to 2026-09-28 (UTC; end dates excluded). The windows overlap by 62 days. Dates reflect indexing, not the employer’s posting date. This measures posting mix, not total hiring or market-wide demand. Matching excludes entrants and exits; changes in crawl completeness within an employer or ATS can still affect the result.

source
Skillenai jobs index, deduplicated daily
entity_id
6a30f564e1a5fedd
data_as_of
2026-09-30
window_days
90
Hiring engineers who use Chef?

The demand, skills, and geo numbers on this page come from the same Skillenai labor market index that powers our API. Use it for compensation benchmarking, hiring-competition analysis, and skill-adoption tracking.

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Compiled by Jared Rand · Data sourced from the Skillenai labor market index