AI hiring spreads in India
- LinkedIn's AI labour update shows AI hiring in India is expanding beyond Bengaluru and Hyderabad. - The report highlights Vijayawada emerging as a fast-growing AI jobs market, challenging metro dominance. - That geographic spread could widen the talent pool available to sports analytics teams outside traditional tech hubs (indiatoday.in).
Artificial intelligence hiring in India is no longer clustering only in Bengaluru and Hyderabad; LinkedIn’s 2026 labour update says Vijayawada is now one of the fastest-rising markets. (indiatoday.in) India Today, citing LinkedIn’s AI Labour Market Update 2026 on April 24, reported that national growth in artificial intelligence job postings outpaced Bengaluru itself. The same update said Vijayawada stood out as a “surprise” growth center. (indiatoday.in) That shift follows LinkedIn’s broader 2025 “Cities on the Rise” ranking, which put Vijayawada among India’s fastest-growing non-metro job hubs. LinkedIn’s list also named Visakhapatnam, Ranchi, Nashik and Raipur as places where professional opportunity was accelerating outside the biggest cities. (thehindu.com) LinkedIn’s separate 2026 entry-level hiring data points in the same direction. Its Grads’ Guide 2026 said hiring for fresh graduates is expanding beyond metros, with smaller cities and smaller firms creating more openings in artificial intelligence, content and consulting roles. (indiatoday.in) The backdrop is a fast-growing national market for artificial intelligence workers. Deloitte India and Nasscom said in August 2024 that India’s demand for artificial intelligence talent is projected to rise from 600,000-650,000 people to more than 1.25 million by 2027. (deloitte.com) Even with that growth, Bengaluru and Hyderabad remain central to the market. LinkedIn’s Jobs on the Rise 2026 data for Hyderabad named artificial intelligence engineer as the city’s fastest-growing job role, showing the big tech hubs are still adding demand as smaller cities gain ground. (deccanchronicle.com) The spread beyond the biggest metros changes where companies can recruit. Teams building sports analytics products, betting models, fan apps or video-analysis tools can look at cities where engineering talent is growing but wage pressure and office costs are often lower than in Bengaluru. (indiatoday.in) For job seekers, the immediate signal is geographic as much as technical: artificial intelligence work in India is widening into more cities at the same time demand for those skills keeps rising. Vijayawada’s appearance in LinkedIn’s 2026 update puts that shift into one place on the map. (indiatoday.in)
