The macro picture
After two cautious years, India's tech hiring is back into measured expansion. GCCs and product companies are leading, while services firms are hiring more selectively around AI, cloud and data platforms.
Where the demand is
Demand is concentrated in a handful of high-leverage skills. Generic full-stack hiring has cooled while specialist roles have hardened.
- Applied AI / ML engineers (LLM tooling, evals, retrieval)
- Platform & infrastructure (Kubernetes, observability, FinOps)
- Data engineering on lakehouse stacks
- Product security and identity
Compensation signals
Median fixed comp at the 6–10 year mark has moved up ~14% for AI-adjacent roles compared to 2025. Variable and ESOP components are widening at staff and principal levels.
City-wise read
Bengaluru continues to set the benchmark. Hyderabad shows the strongest growth on GCC openings. Pune and NCR are increasingly attractive for platform and data roles thanks to BFSI and product anchors.