Survey: The AI wave continues to grow on software development teams

Over the past two years, AI has become ubiquitous, appearing in everything from billboards to executive briefings. Last year, our inaugural developer survey revealed widespread interest in AI-powered coding tools among a small sample of U.S.-based developers, but we still had questions about how multi-disciplinary enterprise engineering teams were engaging with this technology.

This year, we broadened our survey by recruiting 2,000 total respondents with 500 respondents each from the U.S., Brazil, Germany, and India. While software engineers, developers, and programmers made up the majority of our respondents, we also included a small number of data scientists and software designers in our survey to get a fuller and more diverse view of AI’s impact. A consistent trend emerged: while our respondents say AI improves their experience in software development, their perceived usage in their companies remains slow.

More than 97% of respondents reported having used AI coding tools at work at some point, a finding consistent across all four countries. However, a smaller percentage said their companies actively encourage AI tool adoption or allow the use of AI tools, varying by region. The U.S. leads with 88% of respondents indicating at least some company support for AI use, while Germany is lowest at 59%. This highlights an opportunity for organizations to better support their developers’ interest in AI tools, considering local regulations.

Our survey respondents reported that AI helps them work more productively, using the saved time to design systems, collaborate more, and meet customer requirements better.

These findings suggest that individual AI usage isn’t enough. Organizations need to operationalize AI throughout the software development lifecycle to boost collaboration, creativity, and modernization.

AI doesn’t replace human jobs—it frees up time for human creativity.