AI-first roles dominate new tech openings

BENGALURU: Tech firms and AI platforms are stepping up hiring, with AI-first roles now dominating new job openings. As companies accelerate their adoption of AI, demand for professionals skilled in data architecture, machine learning, and generative AI is soaring. India's strong technical talent, adaptability, and scale make it impossible for global firms to overlook in the evolving AI landscape.

As AI-driven transformation gathers pace, companies are prioritising roles that can build and optimise data pipelines, develop AI models, and drive intelligent automation across business functions. OpenAI, which plans to open its first India office in New Delhi later this year, is hiring for roles such as AI deployment manager and solutions architect. Anthropic, the AI firm behind the coding assistant Claude, said it will open an office in Bengaluru early next year, its second in the Asia-Pacific region after Tokyo.




The new centre is expected to further boost AI-related hiring in India. Accenture is also ramping up tech hiring, with over 16,000 open positions in India - including 89 roles in AI and data, 363 in cloud, and over 800 in consulting.

Prashanth Chandrasekar, CEO of online developer community Stack Overflow, said modern-day product and engineering professionals are now expected to design, develop, and maintain AI-based systems. "They need strong skills in machine learning, programming, and data analytics to build applications that can learn and make decisions.

"But as enterprises automate entry-level work, it's becoming harder for young to mid-career professionals to find opportunities to advance," he said.

Srinivas Narayanan, CTO of B2B applications at OpenAI, said in the age of AI, software engineers must evolve into decision-makers with CEO-like vision. Speaking at IIT Madras Alumni Association's Sangam 2025 conference held in July in Bengaluru, he said, "The job is shifting from just writing code to asking the right questions and defining the 'what' and 'why' of a problem. AI can already handle much of the 'how'." India, experts say, is compelling both from a talent and business standpoint. "India is compelling because of the scale of its technical talent and the government's commitment to ensure the benefits of artificial intelligence reach all areas of society," said Dario Amodei, cofounder and CEO of Anthropic, during his recent visit to India.

Viral Shah, cofounder and CEO of software-as-a-service platform JuliaHub, said, "You won't be replaced by AI, but by someone using AI." He cited Dyad, the company's AI-native simulation platform that accelerates hardware design, noting that tasks which earlier took engineers days can now be completed in hours. However, the firm cautioned that correctness remains the biggest challenge, especially when AI-generated code is used.