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96% of tech job ads never say they sponsor. We read 21,604 to find the ones that do

If you only apply to jobs that say “we sponsor visas”, you are choosing from under 4% of the market. We read every live tech job ad we track, from 370 employers hiring in the US, UK, Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany, and compared what the ads say with what the employers actually file.

Checked October 2026

What 21,604 job ads say about sponsorship

On 24 October 2026 we were tracking 21,604 open tech roles. Each ad was read for anything it says about visas, sponsorship or work authorisation.

  • 829 ads (3.8%) say the employer sponsors visas.
  • 3,761 ads (17.4%) say it won't: 1,775 say no sponsorship, and 1,986 require citizenship or a security clearance.
  • 16,980 ads (78.6%) say nothing either way.
  • 34 ads accept only people who already hold a visa that can be transferred.

The 28 companies whose ads say “we sponsor”

All 829 sponsoring ads come from 28 employers, and the top five account for most of them. 754 are for roles in the US, 80 in the UK, 9 in Germany, 5 in Ireland, 3 in Canada and 2 in the Netherlands (some ads cover more than one country).

  • Capital One: 331 open roles that say they sponsor (US).
  • Anthropic: 264 (US, UK, Canada, Germany and Ireland).
  • Verkada: 74 (US).
  • Reflection AI: 43 (US and UK).
  • Ford: 37 (US).
  • Monzo: 22 (UK).
  • Latitude AI: 13, Jump Trading: 12, Rockwell Collins: 10.

Most of these ads are for experienced engineers

Software engineering (386 ads) and machine learning (207) make up over 70% of the sponsoring ads, followed by data science (89) and product management (60).

The level matters more than the field. Of the 829, 312 are mid-level, 242 staff level, 156 managers and 98 senior. Only 19 are internships and 2 are junior roles. If you are early in your career, a sponsoring ad is rare, and the employer's filing record is a far better guide than the ad.

The biggest H-1B sponsors don't say it at all

Every year employers file Labor Condition Applications (LCAs) with the US Department of Labor before an H-1B petition. Comparing those filings with the ads shows how little the ads tell you.

  • Amazon: 15,139 tech LCAs in fiscal 2026, 7,182 of them for new H-1B employment. 1,480 open US roles. Ads that say they sponsor: 0.
  • Google: 6,336 tech LCAs, 3,749 for new employment. 841 open US roles. Ads that say they sponsor: 0.
  • Nvidia: 1,266 tech LCAs. 496 open US roles. Ads that mention sponsorship either way: 0.
  • Microsoft (4,449 tech LCAs), Apple (2,727), Cisco (900) and Oracle (665): the same pattern.

One employer, two answers

Capital One posts more sponsoring ads than anyone, and also 462 ads that say it won't sponsor. Sponsorship is decided role by role: by team, budget and how hard the role is to fill, not by the company as a whole.

So a “no sponsorship” line means no for that role, not for the employer. And silence, which is what 79% of ads offer, usually means nobody wrote it down.

What to do with this

  • Don't filter only on the words “visa sponsorship”: you would skip Amazon, Google and Nvidia.
  • Judge silent ads by the employer's record: how many LCAs it filed for your kind of role last year, and how many were new hires rather than transfers.
  • Treat “no sponsorship” as specific to that role, and look at the same employer's other teams.
  • Outside the US, use the official registers: of the employers we track, 126 are on the UK's licensed sponsor register, with 1,539 open tech roles between them right now.
  • Ask early. A one-line question in the first recruiter call settles it.

Stop guessing which employers can hire you.

Every open role on VisaRoles carries its sponsorship verdict and the line it came from. Free, updated daily.

See the roles that say they sponsor

Common questions

What share of tech job ads offer visa sponsorship?
In our October 2026 count, 3.8%: 829 of 21,604 live tech job ads said the employer sponsors visas. 17.4% said it won't, and 78.6% said nothing either way.
Does Amazon sponsor H-1B visas if the job ad doesn't say so?
Amazon filed 15,139 Labor Condition Applications for tech roles in fiscal 2026, more than any other employer we track, yet none of its 1,480 open US job ads said it sponsors. The filing record is the better signal. Confirm for the specific role with the recruiter.
If a job ad says no sponsorship, does the company never sponsor?
Not necessarily. Capital One had 331 open ads saying it sponsors and 462 saying it won't. Sponsorship is usually decided per role.

Official sources

General information, not legal advice. Immigration rules change and individual cases differ — confirm your own with a licensed immigration attorney.