If you are a fresher refreshing job portals this morning, India’s tech job market is telling you two stories at once. One is celebratory: active tech openings hit 123,000 in October, the highest in 18 months. The other is brutal: barely one in eight of those openings is meant for someone like you.
That is the strange new reality of Indian tech careers in 2026, where the hiring charts are climbing and the entry-level door is quietly closing. The latest Active Tech Jobs Outlook from specialist staffing firm Xpheno, reported this month, shows active tech demand up 5% from September and 17% from October last year. IT services, the old engine of Indian tech employment, recorded 66,000 active openings, up 57% year on year, also an 18-month high.
But look closer and the boom belongs almost entirely to experienced hands.
Senior roles take the lion’s share
More than half of all active tech openings, 55%, are for mid-senior professionals. Only 12% are open to freshers, according to the Xpheno data cited in reporting this week. Core tech and engineering functions account for roughly half of all active demand, led by AI engineering, analyst roles and technical leadership hiring at the top six IT services firms.
Naukri’s monthly JobSpeak index, notably, paints a cooler picture: it shows a 4% year-on-year drop in hiring across IT and software services in October. The two readings measure different things, Xpheno tracks active openings while Naukri tracks new job listings, but the contradiction captures the mood: plenty of chairs, just not for newcomers.
“Most layoffs so far trace back to margin pressures, cost-cutting, or business restructuring under adverse market conditions, and not directly AI-driven,” Xpheno co-founder Kamal Karanth said, adding that mainstream enterprise AI deployments are not yet mature enough to have replaced engineering roles at scale. The jobs are changing shape faster than they are disappearing, and the people caught in between are the ones with the least experience.
AI is rewriting the job description
Nomura’s analysts have called India “ground zero” for assessing AI’s impact on jobs, and it is easy to see why. The IT services sector employs around 6 million people and accounts for nearly 8% of the economy. A McKinsey Global Institute estimate says 30% of job hours in India could be automated by 2030.
The signs are already visible on campuses. Hitesh Oberoi, chief executive of Info Edge, the parent of Naukri, said the large IT services companies “used to traditionally go to campuses and hire lots of young, fresh graduates” and that this hiring “has slowed down considerably”. One ING research note found the big IT firms added just 17 net employees in the first nine months of this fiscal year.
Meanwhile the industry is retooling. TCS is equipping 50,000 associates with Claude, ET reported, and Anthropic counts India as its second-largest market for Claude.ai, with software development making up 45.2% of work-related tasks, the highest of any market. Companies are changing what work they do, where they do it, and which skills they need.
The layoff side of the ledger
The churn underneath the headline numbers is real. Oracle began a second round of layoffs this year with as many as 3,000 employees reportedly affected in India, mostly in product engineering teams. Amazon cut fewer than 1,000 jobs in its Stores division this month as part of a restructuring that has removed around 14,000 corporate roles since last October, redirecting spending toward AI infrastructure.
Across the industry, layoffs.fyi has counted 1,23,305 tech layoffs at 289 companies in 2026. TCS announced it was cutting 12,000 jobs worldwide, mostly in India, and Infosys terminated the contracts of hundreds of trainees last year. More than 15,000 IT professionals returned to India from the US in 2025, and another 7,500 had returned by June this year, according to Xpheno data.
What this means for job hunters right now
If you are planning a tech career in India today, the playbook has changed. A few practical takeaways from the data:
- AI fluency is the new table stakes. Employers are hiring for AI engineering, data and technical leadership. Build demonstrable skill with the tools reshaping the work, not just certificates.
- Experience compounds faster than ever. With 55% of openings at the mid-senior level, the fastest route in is to get any credible experience, internships, freelance projects, open-source contributions, and convert it into a second job.
- Target IT services and GCCs differently. IT services are hiring aggressively for AI roles, while global capability centres, which now employ some 2.4 million people, offer steadier demand. Tailor your pitch to each.
- Watch the timing. Hiring typically picks up after the festive quarter. Use the next two months to close skill gaps rather than mass-applying into a market that is filtering harder than usual.
The bottom line: India’s tech hiring engine is running again, but it is running on a new fuel. The careers that thrive will belong to those who learn the new machinery rather than wait for the old hiring lines to return.
FAQs
Q: How many tech jobs are open in India right now?
A: Around 123,000 active tech openings in October 2026, the highest in 18 months, according to Xpheno’s Active Tech Jobs Outlook.
Q: Are IT companies hiring freshers in 2026?
A: Very selectively. Only about 12% of active tech openings are open to freshers, while 55% target mid-senior professionals. Campus hiring by large IT firms has slowed considerably.
Q: Is AI causing IT layoffs in India?
A: Not directly, according to staffing firm Xpheno: most layoffs trace to margin pressures and restructuring. But AI is reshaping which roles get created, with AI engineering and technical leadership in demand.
Q: Which companies are hiring in tech right now?
A: IT services firms lead with 66,000 active openings, an 18-month high, alongside steady demand from global capability centres. Hiring is concentrated in AI engineering, analyst and technical leadership roles.
Q: What skills should I learn for an IT career in 2026?
A: AI engineering and data skills, cloud operations, and demonstrable hands-on projects matter most. Employers increasingly want proof of AI fluency, not just degrees.
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