Average pay hike for a new job in AI — including AI/ML engineer, robotics engineers, natural language processing engineer, ethics engineer and data architect — has reduced to 15-25% from 50-60% a year ago, said executives from Teamlease Digital and Xpheno. Tech bellwethers are in no urgency to hire as they have shifted the focus to investing in upskilling talent in-house, even as they wait for more use cases in AI, they said.
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“With the drop in demand for AI talent and increase in AI upskilling of in-house talent, the active chase for AI talent has significantly cooled down over the last few quarters,” said Prasadh MS, head of workforce research at specialist staffing firm Xpheno.
“Slow hiring funnels with sufficient talent supply have shrunk negotiation bandwidths for AI roles by over 50%. Offer hikes have accordingly moderated to the typical 15%-25% range for the low- to mid-experience hires. As startups continue to stay off the hiring market, outlier offers in the high percentage ranges have become few and far apart,” Prasadh said.
Krishna Vij, business head at Teamlease Digital, said: “In 2022, the AI demand-supply gap was nearly 50%, exacerbated by skill deficits. With improved supply in the market and addressing skills, the gap now ranges between 20% and 25%.”
“The demand for AI surged post-2022 across the tech industry, surpassing the available supply. Companies responded by offering higher salaries to attract AI talent, with hikes ranging from 20-50%. However, in the last one year, the number of available positions has dropped while supply of talent has also increased due to upskilling initiatives of companies. As a result, the pay hikes in AI have also tapered down,” she added.
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Data from Xpheno show that the accessible talent pool of professionals with AI skills in the technology sector in 2024 at about 360,000. In the past one year, there was a minor 1% net headcount growth, largely for attrition backfills.“As a predominantly services market, India is all set and waiting on the sidelines for the spike in mainstream consumption of GenAI and AI in general,” said Prasadh.
Salary range for junior-level candidates in niche AI skills range between Rs 8 lakh and Rs 15 lakh, while in the mid-level, it is Rs 25-45 lakh.
Lohit Bhatia, president of workforce management at Quess Corp, said: “IT services will take some time to come back to full mojo,” However, he added that niche talent will command a premium as use cases of GenAI expand which will lead to new demand coming in.”
Average pay hike for a new job in AI — including AI/ML engineer, robotics engineers, natural language processing engineer, ethics engineer and data architect — has reduced to 15-25% from 50-60% a year ago, said executives from Teamlease Digital and Xpheno. Tech bellwethers are in no urgency to hire as they have shifted the focus to investing in upskilling talent in-house, even as they wait for more use cases in AI, they said.
Elevate Your Tech Prowess with High-Value Skill Courses
| Offering College | Course | Website |
|---|---|---|
| IIT Delhi | IITD Certificate Programme in Data Science & Machine Learning | Visit |
| IIM Lucknow | IIML Executive Programme in FinTech, Banking & Applied Risk Management | Visit |
| MIT | MIT Technology Leadership and Innovation | Visit |
“With the drop in demand for AI talent and increase in AI upskilling of in-house talent, the active chase for AI talent has significantly cooled down over the last few quarters,” said Prasadh MS, head of workforce research at specialist staffing firm Xpheno.
“Slow hiring funnels with sufficient talent supply have shrunk negotiation bandwidths for AI roles by over 50%. Offer hikes have accordingly moderated to the typical 15%-25% range for the low- to mid-experience hires. As startups continue to stay off the hiring market, outlier offers in the high percentage ranges have become few and far apart,” Prasadh said.
Krishna Vij, business head at Teamlease Digital, said: “In 2022, the AI demand-supply gap was nearly 50%, exacerbated by skill deficits. With improved supply in the market and addressing skills, the gap now ranges between 20% and 25%.”
“The demand for AI surged post-2022 across the tech industry, surpassing the available supply. Companies responded by offering higher salaries to attract AI talent, with hikes ranging from 20-50%. However, in the last one year, the number of available positions has dropped while supply of talent has also increased due to upskilling initiatives of companies. As a result, the pay hikes in AI have also tapered down,” she added.
Discover the stories of your interest
Data from Xpheno show that the accessible talent pool of professionals with AI skills in the technology sector in 2024 at about 360,000. In the past one year, there was a minor 1% net headcount growth, largely for attrition backfills.“As a predominantly services market, India is all set and waiting on the sidelines for the spike in mainstream consumption of GenAI and AI in general,” said Prasadh.
Salary range for junior-level candidates in niche AI skills range between Rs 8 lakh and Rs 15 lakh, while in the mid-level, it is Rs 25-45 lakh.
Lohit Bhatia, president of workforce management at Quess Corp, said: “IT services will take some time to come back to full mojo,” However, he added that niche talent will command a premium as use cases of GenAI expand which will lead to new demand coming in.”