Hiring of AI professionals in India rises by 59.5%: LinkedIn report
Bengaluru tops the list in AI hiring followed by Hyderabad and there has been emergence of Tier II cities for such talent.
Hiring for artificial intelligence (AI) professionals in India has surged 59.5% year-on-year, according to LinkedIn's AI Labor Market Report 2026, underscoring the country's rapidly expanding role in the global AI landscape.
The report noted that while Bengaluru retains its status as India's premier AI hub, there is a clear geographic shift in hiring trends. Hyderabad has seen a 51% rise in AI engineering recruitment, while Tier II city Vijayawada recorded a 45.5% increase, indicating that the AI surge is spreading beyond traditional tech centres.
The growth is being fuelled by widespread AI adoption across organisations of all sizes. Large enterprises still account for the bulk of AI talent, investing heavily in infrastructure, governance, and large-scale deployment. At the same time, small and mid-sized businesses are rapidly catching up, playing a key role in bridging the gap between early experimentation and full-scale implementation.
The momentum is also transforming traditional industries. In manufacturing, the share of AI engineering talent has quadrupled to 2% in 2025, signalling that AI adoption is rapidly extending beyond the tech sector.
In terms of skills, demand is coalescing around applied, deployment-ready capabilities. AI Agents, AI productivity tools, Azure AI Studio, intelligent agents, and automated feature engineering are among the most sought-after competencies, particularly within the SMB sector. In manufacturing, AI Prompting is fast becoming a baseline requirement.
Malai Lakshmanan, Head of LinkedIn India Engineering, said, the trend reflects a broader shift from curiosity to execution. "Those who can move from experimentation to execution will be best positioned to capture the opportunity," she noted, advising professionals to build hands-on skills, target roles that match their profiles, and demonstrate real-world AI application through verifiable projects and tools.
For India's engineering workforce, the message is clear: the AI opportunity is large, it is spreading, and it rewards those who can show, not just tell what they know.
Edited by Megha Reddy