2009 was a horrible year for job seekers, and even those holding on to existing jobs. No bonuses, no promotions, layoffs, and nobody hiring. And SoCal successfully beat most of the United States in unemployment claims, by several percentage points, attaching painful and empirical fact to the grim situation.

But that does appear to be changing. Slowly changing, but it is looking better for job seekers in the region. A recent scrape of job openings for Los Angeles and Orange Counties yielded some pretty strong job titles:

• Director of Engineering - Marina Del Rey
• Chief Integration Engineer - El Segundo
• Director, information technology - San Clemente
• VP Global Services - Los Angeles
• Customer Services Director - El Segundo
• Lead Systems Engineer - Los Angeles
• Senior Industrial Director - Irvine
• Smart GRID Architect - Rosemead
• HL7 Integrator - Los Angeles
• Disaster Recovery Manager - Irvine
• Manager, Operations Systems - Van Nuys, CA
• Systems Architecture Engineer - Huntington Beach, CA

And the list goes on... About 350 good positions listed in my 25 January search.