Hiring narrows, TCS hiring surge

Tech hiring in 2026 is widening at the top and narrowing at the entry points. Companies are still hiring, but the openings are clustering around a shorter list of skills. (dev.to) A DEV Community post published April 12 said 92% of companies plan to hire this year even after nearly 79,000 tech layoffs in the first quarter. It said many employers now screen first for artificial intelligence fluency, cloud computing, cybersecurity, full-stack development and data engineering. (dev.to) That list points to jobs tied to building and running software systems, not just using software tools. The same post said companies are cutting broad-based recruiting and replacing it with role-specific hiring tied to automation, infrastructure and data work. (dev.to) Tata Consultancy Services is showing a different side of the market. On April 13, Business Today reported the company had already made 25,000 fresher offers for financial year 2027, and Chief Executive Officer K Krithivasan said more hiring would depend on demand. (businesstoday.in) Tata Consultancy Services also returned to net headcount growth in the quarter ending March 31, 2026. The company said total headcount rose to 584,519 in the fourth quarter, up 2,356 from the December quarter, after two straight quarterly declines. (tcs.com, bizzbuzz.news) The company’s own results showed business conditions were still mixed. Revenue for the fourth quarter was $7.62 billion, up 1.5% sequentially, while full-year revenue was $30.02 billion, down 0.5% year over year in reported terms. (tcs.com) That helps explain why the hiring picture looks uneven instead of strong across the board. Large services firms can keep making campus offers and add staff in small increments while still limiting experienced hiring to projects with signed demand. (businesstoday.in, tcs.com) It also helps explain why candidates are hearing two messages at once. Layoffs are continuing in parts of tech, but employers that are hiring are concentrating on workers who can ship code, manage cloud systems, secure networks or prepare data for artificial intelligence models. (dev.to) At Tata Consultancy Services, management paired the hiring update with a push to retrain staff already on payroll. The company said annualized artificial intelligence revenue crossed $2.3 billion in the fourth quarter and said it was continuing to invest in a “future-ready workforce.” (tcs.com) The result is not a single hiring boom or a single hiring freeze. It is a market where the number of openings can rise at the same time the range of people who fit them gets smaller. (dev.to, tcs.com)