India’s overall IT recruitment is cooling, but AI roles are still moving ahead.
AI hiring within India’s IT sector rose 16% year over year in June, while overall IT job listings fell 3%, according to Naukri’s monthly JobSpeak report cited by Reuters. The gap shows how India’s $315 billion IT industry is still investing in specialized AI talent even as broader tech recruitment cools under weak client spending, automation pressure, and shifting workforce models.
The numbers point to a hiring market that is becoming more selective. For IT leaders, the shift means AI adoption is no longer only a technology issue. It is also changing what skills companies need on their teams.
AI hiring is changing IT workforce plans
Reuters noted that Naukri’s JobSpeak report compiled job listings from more than 150,000 firms on its website. The report found that AI hiring in India’s IT sector rose 16% in June from a year earlier, while overall IT jobs declined 3%.
“The divergence (between AI and overall IT hiring) is important because it shows where tech companies are still investing,” Hitesh Oberoi, CEO of Info Edge, which owns Naukri, told Reuters.
“AI is increasingly becoming a core capability area, especially as demand shifts toward more senior and specialized talent,” Oberoi highlighted.
Reuters also said that India’s IT industry is under pressure as clients hold back on technology spending in a weak macroeconomic environment. AI is also challenging the sector’s traditional service model, which has long relied on large workforces handling outsourced technology work.
AI demand is spreading into business teams
The hiring trend was not limited to software exporters. Across 14 sectors, AI and machine learning jobs increased 25%, according to the Naukri report cited by Reuters.
ForkLog also cited the Naukri data and reported that insurance and consumer goods showed the strongest hiring growth during the period.
The growth in insurance and consumer goods suggests AI demand in India is expanding beyond software services, as more industries look to automate workflows, improve customer service, analyze data, and build predictive systems.
For India’s workforce, the hiring split points to a more selective tech job market, with general IT roles under pressure and specialized AI skills drawing stronger demand.
Roles tied to machine learning, data engineering, AI infrastructure, automation, and model deployment may become more important as companies move from AI pilots to practical use cases that need technical oversight.
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TCS shows how the workforce model is changing
The shift is also showing up inside India’s largest IT firms.
According to Reuters, Tata Consultancy Services said last month that it expects IT companies to slow hiring as they move toward having an equal number of employees and AI agents in their workforces.
TCS cut more than 12,000 jobs in July 2025, and its headcount fell by more than 23,000 on a net basis in the fiscal year ended March 2026.
The contrast helps explain why AI hiring can rise even as overall IT recruitment falls.
Companies are not simply adding more workers; they are rethinking which roles they need as AI becomes part of service delivery, automation, and client work.
For workers, the shift adds pressure to build AI-adjacent skills rather than wait for broad IT hiring to recover. For employers, it raises the harder task of finding experienced AI talent while helping existing teams adapt.
The latest hiring data suggest India’s IT workforce is not just getting larger or smaller. It is being reshaped around the skills companies believe they will need next, with AI moving closer to the center of workforce planning.
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