LinkedIn: AI hiring in India +59.5%
- LinkedIn’s AI Labor Market Report 2026 says AI engineering hiring in India rose 59.5% year over year, the fastest growth among markets studied, with demand spreading beyond Bengaluru into newer cities. - Bengaluru remains India’s main AI hub, but Hyderabad’s AI hiring rose 51% and Vijayawada’s climbed 45.5%, while large companies and smaller firms both added applied AI talent. - The report lands as global hiring stays below pre-pandemic levels and AI roles keep expanding, especially in deployment-heavy work across sectors. (weforum.org)
AI engineering hiring in India rose 59.5% year over year, according to LinkedIn’s AI Labor Market Report 2026. (indianexpress.com) LinkedIn said that was the fastest growth rate among the markets it studied, including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. The report was released on April 24, 2026. (techinasia.com) (indianexpress.com) Bengaluru remains the country’s anchor for AI talent, with 3.0% of LinkedIn members there identified as AI engineering talent, a share Times of India said is on par with San Francisco globally. (timesofindia.indiatimes.com) The hiring spread is no longer limited to the biggest tech hubs. LinkedIn’s data showed Hyderabad’s AI engineering hiring up 51% year over year and Vijayawada’s up 45.5%. (thehansindia.com) (yourstory.com) That shift tracks how companies are using AI now. The strongest demand is tied less to lab research and more to engineers who can build, deploy, and run AI systems inside everyday products and business tools. (indianexpress.com) LinkedIn India engineering head Malai Lakshmanan said applied AI skills such as AI agents and productivity tools are growing quickly because they are tied directly to real-world deployment. He said engineers who can move from experimentation to execution are best positioned in this market. (indianexpress.com) Large enterprises still account for most AI hiring because they are spending on infrastructure, governance, and large-scale rollouts. LinkedIn’s report also said small and mid-sized businesses are adding AI talent as they move from pilots to production use. (yourstory.com) (business-standard.com) The sector mix is widening too. Indian Express, citing LinkedIn, said AI engineering talent in manufacturing expanded fourfold and reached 2% of that workforce in 2025. (indianexpress.com) The backdrop is a weaker overall labor market globally. LinkedIn data cited by the World Economic Forum said hiring worldwide was still about 20% below pre-pandemic levels even as AI-related roles added more than 1.3 million jobs. (weforum.org) India’s latest AI hiring numbers suggest companies are still spending where automation reaches production systems, not just prototypes. The report’s map of growth now runs from Bengaluru and Hyderabad to cities that were barely part of the AI hiring conversation a year ago. (thehansindia.com) (india today.in)
