AI skills gap clouds hiring revival at Indian IT firms

India’s information technology (IT) companies are hiring again after a prolonged period of cautious recruitment. This time, however, the hiring playbook looks very different. Instead of the mass recruitment drives that once defined the sector’s growth, companies are selectively hiring professionals with specialised artificial intelligence (AI) skills as demand for enterprise AI projects gathers pace.

The rebound, however, remains narrow. A shortage of industry-ready AI professionals is making recruitment slower and more expensive, raising questions about how quickly companies can execute their AI ambitions.

The evolving hiring pattern is reflected in the June 2026 edition of Naukri’s JobSpeak report, according to which AI hiring within the IT sector rose 16 per cent year-on-year, even as overall IT job listings declined 3 per cent during the same period. The divergence suggests that India’s IT hiring recovery is increasingly being driven by specialised AI roles rather than broad-based recruitment.

IT hiring is back, but selectively
Rather than expanding headcount across the board, India’s leading IT services firms are selectively recruiting professionals whose capabilities align with growing enterprise demand for AI. Companies are adopting different strategies to build specialised AI talent pools, ranging from client-facing AI deployment roles to skills-first hiring models.

HCLTech is building a cadre of Forward Deployed Engineers who work directly with customers to solve business problems using AI and other advanced technologies. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has shifted towards smaller, targeted hiring with a focus on AI-native talent and critical thinking skills.

Infosys has revamped its campus hiring strategy to prioritise AI, generative AI, cloud computing and data engineering talent, while Wipro is increasingly adopting a skills-first approach that places greater emphasis on demonstrable capabilities than conventional academic credentials. Tech Mahindra and LTIMindtree, meanwhile, are recruiting selectively for AI, data science, cloud and other digital roles.

“Organisations today are looking beyond foundational technical skills to professionals who can apply AI in business contexts, work with data, think critically, solve complex problems, and adapt continuously as technology evolves. This marks a fundamental shift from qualification-led hiring to capability-led talent strategies,” said Shilpa Dua, chief human resources officer at NIIT.

Why AI talent is becoming harder to find
However, this hiring revival faces a significant constraint: the shortage of industry-ready AI professionals in India. Demand for specialised AI capabilities is growing much faster than the available talent pool.

According to a Nasscom report, more than 90 per cent of early-career technology professionals use AI tools, but only 23 per cent qualify as ‘AI-native’ engineers with the technical depth and independent problem-solving skills needed to build and deploy AI systems. The industry body estimates that India could face a shortage of more than 600,000 AI professionals by 2027.

“Talent is not the issue, the problem exists in the gap between academic education and corporate applications. Although graduates may be knowledgeable about machine learning or be good Python programmers, they do not have hands-on experience with AI development in practice,” said Anand Mahurkar, founder and chief executive officer of Findability Sciences. “As a result, it’s hard to find AI professionals today who possess solid technical knowledge and at the same time have a deep business understanding.”

The challenge extends beyond technical expertise. According to ManpowerGroup’s Global Talent Shortage Survey 2026, 82 per cent of employers globally report difficulty finding the skilled talent they need. AI model and application development (39 per cent) and AI literacy (38 per cent) rank among the hardest capabilities to hire.

“The most difficult roles to fill are those that combine AI expertise with deep industry and engineering domain knowledge. The challenge isn’t only technical proficiency in AI, but the ability to deploy AI solutions at enterprise scale while understanding complex engineering environments and client business contexts,” said Sonia Kutty, senior vice-president, people and culture, Quest Global.

Growing competition from global capability centres (GCCs), startups and multinational technology companies, coupled with the rapid evolution of AI models and programming frameworks, is also making it harder for India’s IT services firms to secure and retain experienced AI professionals.

Why more engineering graduates have not solved the problem
India produces nearly 1.5 million engineering graduates every year, a number that should, in theory, be sufficient to meet the country’s growing demand for AI talent. Yet companies continue to struggle to fill specialised AI roles, highlighting that the challenge is no longer one of quantity but of employability.

The gap lies in the difference between AI literacy and job-ready AI expertise. “AI is evolving at a much faster rate than the traditional university curriculum revision cycles. By the time many programmes are updated, the industry has already moved to the next generation of tools and applications. Faculty development has not kept pace with this transformation, leaving many educators without adequate exposure to the latest AI tools and industry practices,” said Prof V N Rajasekharan Pillai, an elected Fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and a researcher in Polymer Science and Technology.

Prof Pillai added that the challenge extends beyond curriculum design. “Curricula are still siloed, while AI is inherently multidisciplinary. The number of institutes that possess faculty expertise, advanced computing infrastructure and industry ecosystems to deliver high-quality AI education at scale is relatively small. Access to high-performance computing, cloud platforms, quality datasets and modern laboratories also varies considerably across institutions,” he said.

How Indian IT firms are building AI capabilities
As hiring alone becomes insufficient to meet their AI talent requirements, Indian IT companies are increasingly investing in reskilling programmes, industry partnerships and workforce development initiatives to prepare employees for enterprise AI deployment. Alongside selective recruitment, firms are redesigning learning programmes and embedding AI into day-to-day work as they seek to build an enterprise-ready workforce.

“While external hiring remains essential for specialised roles such as Agentic AI, AI engineering, MLOps and AI security, a growing share of enterprise AI requirements is now being addressed through internal reskilling because it is more scalable and sustainable,” Tushar Dhawan, chief executive officer of TrueSales, told Business Standard.

Findability Sciences’ Mahurkar said, “Companies are investing heavily in AI training academies, role-based learning pathways, certification programmes, hackathons and sandbox environments where employees can experiment with AI applications. Many are also partnering with universities and cloud service providers to expand the pipeline of industry-ready talent.”

Industry leaders say continuous upskilling will be critical as AI technologies evolve faster than traditional hiring cycles. “Companies must invest in structured onboarding, continuous upskilling, and building an AI-first culture where new graduates are immersed in AI-driven ways of working from day one. Preparing the next generation of AI talent is a shared responsibility, and only by working together can academia and industry build a workforce equipped to lead the AI economy,” said Shivraj Sabale, chief operating officer of Xoriant.

Experts say it could take another three to five years to develop an enterprise-ready AI workforce at scale. Until then, companies will have to rely on a combination of selective hiring, internal reskilling and industry partnerships to bridge the gap between demand and supply. Business Standard