India hiring skews senior

India’s white-collar hiring grew again at the end of fiscal year 2025-26, but much of the new demand is clustering at the top. (naukri.com) Naukri’s JobSpeak Index reached 2,858 in March 2026, up 9% from a year earlier, and closed fiscal year 2025-26 with 8% growth after 2% growth in fiscal year 2024-25. Information technology hiring was flat overall, even as artificial intelligence and machine learning roles rose 37% in March and 45% for the full fiscal year. (naukri.com) The steepest growth inside artificial intelligence and machine learning came in the highest salary bands. Jobs paying more than 50 lakh rupees a year rose 55%, while the 40-49 lakh and 30-39 lakh bands rose 40% and 41%. (naukri.com) Recruiters say the same pattern is showing up in leadership searches. Ratna Gupta of ABC Consultants told The Economic Times that mandates for director, vice-president and higher roles are up about 20%, with multinational companies also hiring country heads for India-based global capability centres. (economictimes.indiatimes.com) A global capability centre is the India-based arm of a multinational company that runs technology, engineering, finance, analytics or operations work for the parent company. In India’s technology hiring market, these centres accounted for about 27% of demand in 2025, up from about 15% in 2024, according to Quess data reported by The Economic Times. (economictimes.indiatimes.com) That shift has changed who gets hired. The same Quess data put total technology demand at 1.8 million roles in 2025, up 16% from 2024, but said traditional information technology services and consulting firms were growing only about 7% to 8% and hiring remained selective. (economictimes.indiatimes.com, timesofindia.indiatimes.com) TeamLease described the broader market in similar terms in its second-half fiscal year 2025-26 outlook. The firm said hiring was shifting toward “revenue-linked, client-facing, and capability roles,” while 56% of employers said they planned to expand headcount in the coming months. (group.teamlease.com) The pressure is strongest on work that can be moved across borders or automated. The Economic Times reported on April 9 that Indian information technology firms had filed more layoff notices in the United States in the first three months of 2026 than in all of 2025, as clients pushed for lower costs and more work moved offshore to India and the Philippines. (economictimes.indiatimes.com) Entry-level hiring has not disappeared, but it is not driving this rebound. Naukri said jobs for workers with zero to three years of experience rose 16% year over year in March, yet much of that growth came from hospitality, business process outsourcing and information technology-enabled services, and education rather than core information technology. (naukri.com) India’s hiring market is still expanding, but the old model of broad-based technology intake is giving way to a narrower one. The fastest-moving jobs are in senior leadership, specialized artificial intelligence work and multinational centres that want people who can deliver from day one. (naukri.com, economictimes.indiatimes.com, economictimes.indiatimes.com)