The Junior Challenge: Is There Still a Place for Entry-Level Talent in Israeli High-Tech?
For years, Israel’s high-tech industry offered a clear promise: study computer science or engineering, land your first junior role, and build a stable career in the country’s fastest-growing sector. This pathway has begun to crack
Israeli high-tech remains a global leader in innovation, attracts multinational companies, and employs hundreds of thousands of professionals. But for recent graduates, the picture looks very different. Entry-level positions have become scarce, the search for a first job is significantly longer, and a difficult question now looms large: is there still room for beginners in Israel’s high-tech industry?
Why Junior Roles Have Become So Hard to Find
The data reflects a structural shift. The number of junior positions in Israel has dropped by tens of percent, and a university degree is no longer an automatic ticket into the industry. What was once a demand-driven job market has become one that prioritizes precision, experience, and the ability to contribute almost immediately.
This change is not accidental. Israel’s high-tech sector has moved from a phase of rapid expansion to one of maturity. During years of low interest rates and abundant venture capital, companies hired aggressively, often viewing junior employees as long-term investments. Today, under pressure to demonstrate efficiency and profitability, hiring entry-level workers is often perceived as a short-term cost rather than a future asset.
Economic uncertainty and Israel’s complex security environment have further intensified the trend. Many companies have frozen hiring, reduced teams, and shown a clear preference for experienced professionals, even at higher salaries.
How Artificial Intelligence Is Reshaping the Entry Point
Into this reality came the AI revolution. Many traditional entry-level tasks like basic coding, testing, debugging, and documentation that were long considered the training ground for junior developers, are now handled by advanced AI tools. The classic entry point into software development is shrinking.
A senior developer equipped with automation tools can now do work that once required an entire team. From a business perspective, it is often more efficient to invest in tools and experienced staff than to train juniors for months. At the same time, global competition has intensified. For the cost of a local junior hire, companies can often employ an experienced developer abroad, pushing entry-level roles out of Israel altogether.
Where Are Opportunities Still Growing?
Despite the slowdown in generic software development, several areas of Israeli high-tech continue to hire young engineers and in some cases, demand is growing. What they share is technological depth and a strong connection to the physical world.
Chip design and hardware engineering are a clear example. While AI replaces certain software tasks, it requires enormous computational power. Israel remains a key player in the global semiconductor industry, and international companies continue to recruit engineering graduates for hardware, VLSI, and verification roles—fields that demand deep mathematical and physical understanding that cannot be easily automated.
Israel’s defense industries also remain a major employment anchor. Real-time systems, embedded software, and hardware-adjacent development require exceptional reliability and responsibility. As a result, defense companies continue to train and absorb young engineers even during periods of uncertainty.
Other fields are also largely bypassing the “junior crisis”: energy and infrastructure engineering, quantum computing, and bio-convergence—the integration of engineering, life sciences, and data. These sectors suffer from a chronic talent shortage in Israel and offer long-term employment stability.
How Bar-Ilan University Is Rethinking the Path Forward
This is where Bar-Ilan University comes into the picture. Rather than attempting to “fix” the junior crisis, the university has chosen to bypass it through a fundamental rethinking of professional training. Instead of preparing graduates for entry-level roles that are disappearing, Bar-Ilan focuses on pathways leading directly into deep-tech fields where demand remains strong even at early career stages.
Within the Faculty of Engineering, Bar-Ilan offers a specialization in VLSI and hardware engineering, an area in which the university is considered one of Israel’s leading institutions. Chip design is one of the most stable segments of the Israeli high-tech market, with sustained demand for young engineers and a willingness to hire graduates without prior industry experience. Advanced laboratories and close ties with the semiconductor industry expose students to real-world challenges during their studies, giving them a significant advantage when entering the job market.
Another major investment is in quantum engineering. Bar-Ilan’s Quantum Center brings together the Departments of Physics and Engineering to train students in qubit control, quantum hardware, and complex experimental systems. In a field where there are virtually no “ready-made juniors,” companies must grow talent internally—giving a clear advantage to graduates with deep academic preparation.
In bio-convergence, Bar-Ilan runs a dedicated multidisciplinary program combining biology, engineering, and data science. Designed in response to industry needs, the program prepares hybrid engineers sought by pharmaceutical and medical-device companies. This field has been identified in Israel as a future growth engine and is relatively resilient to automation.
Bar-Ilan also emphasizes applied research tracks in artificial intelligence and signal processing, but from a different angle. The focus is not on using existing AI tools, but on developing the algorithms, models, and infrastructures behind them. This mathematical and physical depth enables graduates to integrate into research labs and advanced algorithmic companies—spaces where AI continues to create demand for young engineers rather than replace them.
“The market has changed,” says Batel Marciano, Director of BU's Employability Center. “Classic junior positions are declining. We are not just responding to this shift, we are redefining how students enter the job market. We connect them with leading companies, develop critical skills such as professional English, networking, creativity, and systems thinking.”
“At Bar-Ilan, students effectively become ‘juniors’ during their studies: working on real projects, gaining hands-on experience, and integrating into high-demand fields. By graduation, they enter the workforce with the profile of experienced professionals, equipped with confidence, skills, and the ability to contribute and grow quickly.”