Get in touch
Chainguard

2026 Engineering Reality Report

October 2025
Research parameters
Topic:
The developer experience
Countries:
US, UK, France, Germany
No. of interviews:
1,200
Methodology:
Quantitative
Respondent profile:
Software developers and senior IT decision makers

Brief

Chainguard is a key player in cybersecurity, by helping companies secure their software supply chains, eliminate vulnerabilities, and combat malware. They wanted to conduct primary research to support a thought leadership campaign to drive brand growth and commercial opportunities.

Solution

We conducted an international survey to understand the experiences of software developers and engineers at organisations, how this differed from the views of senior leadership and potential means/methods of improvement.

Outcome

The results were used to create Chainguard’s 2026 Engineering reality report, highlighting the difficulties faced by software engineers, and positioning Chainguard as an expert within the industry.

Read the report.

Key findings

72%
of engineers state that demands on their time make it difficult to make space for building new features
65%
state the majority of their organisation's common software engineering tasks are either mostly or fully automated
93%
of engineers report finding writing code and building new features to be rewarding, but only spend 16% of their typical working week on average on this type of work
Want to be on our website too? Let’s talk
Senior Research Manager
Head of Agency Partnerships