Engineering graduates face fewer IT jobs as automation reshapes hiring

According to at least five placement heads of the country’s top universities, IT services companies, including Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, Infosys Ltd, and HCL Technologies Ltd, and the back-end tech centres of large multinational companies, are expected to hire fewer college students for the batch of 2026, as compared with last year.

For IT services companies, this would be a third successive year of lower hiring from campuses as they now shift their gaze to talent with specialised skills in artificial intelligence, cloud and data analytics. This implies higher competition among engineering graduates, who will have to prove their mettle beyond coding and application development, a skill long seen as the gateway to a job at an IT outsourcer.

Dip in IT hiring

At least one placement officer stated that much of the decline in hiring could be attributed to automation and companies engaging multiple IT vendors, which reduces the need for IT outsourcers to hire graduates in bulk to service projects.

“Demand fluctuations are there because of AI, and the number of project requirements has gone down because of IT services companies choosing multiple vendors to handle their IT work. Instead of hiring and parking employees without any work, they are holding hiring,” said Sreenivasa Ramanujam Kanduri, dean of training and placements at Ramaiah Institute of Technology, a Bengaluru-based engineering college.

“The country’s largest IT services companies used to hire three-digit numbers two years ago, whereas now it has come down to two-digits, between 50-70 students,” Kanduri said.

Ramaiah has completed placements for about three-fourths of its 2026 batch students, mainly in roles related to software and AI engineering, as well as data analysis. Kanduri expects the remaining student placements to be finalised by January. Last year, the college’s students received 1,892 job offers from 358 companies, with an average annual salary of ₹7.7 lakh.

A placement officer from a second college voiced a similar opinion.

“Each of the IT services companies is looking at hiring smaller numbers this year compared with the last because of tariff wars in the US, AI impact and the post-covid overhang,” said Dr. Badrinath V, dean of Corporate Relations and Extension Activities at Thanjavur-based SASTRA Deemed University.

Tariff-related uncertainties in the US, the largest market for homegrown IT outsourcers, prompted large companies to divert their tech spending to sourcing essential raw materials to run their daily business. As a result, IT services companies have been hesitant to hire more employees due to the uncertain demand for IT-related work.

Check on placements

On the other hand, while covid boosted business for homegrown IT services companies as companies sought to digitise their operations, demand has stabilised, and tech services providers are no longer hiring in bulk from engineering colleges, as they did during the pandemic.

To be sure, lower hiring by IT services companies over the last two years was offset by Global Capability Centres (GCCs). However, with the rise of automation tools, even GCCs may not hire as many.

“They (GCCs) are currently looking at different avenues of engagement, including campus hiring, for which they are in the process of compensation mapping in line with our median salaries (of ₹20 lakh). Companies like Okta, Epicor, Expedia, etc., are paying in a similar or higher range,” said Balasubramanian Gurumurthy, chief placement officer of Birla Institute of Technology and Sciences, for India and Dubai.

This double whammy underscores the anxiety at the largest engineering colleges and among the 2026 batch.

Placement executives at colleges do not want to talk about the number of placements to IT services companies and GCCs for the graduating batch of 2026, however, they believe there is a real risk of the lowest placement offers in the last few years.

A fourth placement head said automation is one of the many reasons which may have led companies to delay hiring.

“IT services companies and GCCs have delayed hiring this year because they started discussions late. Normally, they would have finished their hiring by this time, but it has been delayed because they received clarity on hiring numbers a little later. We have been told that they will hire,” said Dr. K.S. Sridhar, registrar and placement head at PES University in Bengaluru.

PES University sent over 1,500 students to about 350 companies last year.

Students face uncertainty

According to management commentary, TCS, Infosys, and Wipro Ltd expect to hire 42,000 freshers, 20,000 freshers, and up to 12,000 freshers in this fiscal year, respectively. On the other hand, HCLTech expects to hire more than 7,800 freshers, albeit in specialised skill-based roles.

The Big Five have ended the April-September 2025 period with a cumulative total of 3,097 employees, which is almost a third of their total from last year. On the other hand, the country’s mid-sized IT services firms, which earn between $1 billion and $5 billion in revenue, ended with 7,802 employees, nearly half the number of last year.

Mint had reported on 13 November that mid-caps are expected to hire more than large-caps, but the future of college graduates, who are mostly picked for roles ranging between ₹4 lakh to ₹30 lakh, hangs in the balance.

The country’s largest IT services companies, which traditionally hire in bulk from engineering colleges, have pointed out that hiring will not correspond to revenue growth as automation rewrites the rules for the country’s $283 billion IT sector. Mint’s report on 4 November looks at this in greater detail.

“For much of the last 30 years, IT services grew through a linear model. More people and more projects drove incremental growth. AI is reshaping that equation by compressing time, cost, and complexity, and redefining how value is created,” said S. Ravi Kumar, CEO of Cognizant, during the company’s post-earnings call on 29 October.

While the large IT services companies’ delay and uncertain hiring plans are keeping students on tenterhooks, some colleges are trying various methods to keep them happy.

Skill-based roles

“Since IT firms typically recruit in large numbers at lower entry-level packages of around ₹3.5-4 lakh per annum, we decided to cap recruiter participation at a minimum compensation of ₹6 lakh per annum for campus placements, in the best interest of our students,” said Saroj Kumar Sarangi, professor in-charge of Training and Placement at the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Jamshedpur.

Sarangi expects GCCs to pick-up graduates for skill-based roles, particularly in AI, rather than the traditional software developer positions offered by IT companies. Placement season at the country’s largest engineering colleges starts in September and lasts until March.

For B-schools, the placement cycle for older IIMs, such as Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, and Kolkata, typically starts in late January and February, while newer IIMs begin in December.

This year, while IT services firms that traditionally hired in bulk from both management and engineering campuses are cutting back on offers, particularly across tier II and tier III institutions, consulting firms are expected to retain their strong hiring momentum for the class of 2026. Early trends from summer placements already point to sustained demand from these recruiters. At the same time, core sectors such as engineering, manufacturing, and infrastructure, along with emerging verticals like semiconductors and AI-driven enterprises, are increasingly stepping in to fill the gap.

At least one brokerage pointed towards muted hiring in junior roles but expected a higher pick-up in specialised roles.

“While the outlook in junior IT hiring remains uncertain, demand for premium talent, GCC roles and non-IT roles remains robust,” said ICICI Securities analysts Abhisek Banerjee and Jayram Shetty, in a note dated 13 November.

According to a Mint report on 27 August, the country’s top IT firms were chasing employees with more specialised skillsets, leaning on existing bench strengths rather than hiring in bulk.