New Skills, New Stakes: AI reshapes IT salaries and job security

Employees equipped with new-age AI skills are commanding 20–40 per cent higher salary premiums than those engaged in traditional roles in the IT sector, according to hiring firms.

On average, leaders with AI skills enjoy a premium of about 30-35 per cent while entry level talent receive a much lower premium of around 8-10 per cent. This premium also depends on the level and industry that is hiring, as per TeamLease Digital.

“For most roles, the pay differential between the niche roles and traditional ones is close to 25 per cent. However, there are some new roles such as LLM & Gen AI Engineers, Platform Engineers and Risk Leads that pay above 40 per cent higher salaries than conventional roles,” said Neeti Sharma, CEO, TeamLease Digital.

This pay divide is all the more apparent in India’s Global Capability Centres (GCCs), product firms, global consulting setups, where recruiters look for both governance skills and domain expertise. Meanwhile, most traditional engineering, analytics and delivery roles are seeing modest single-digit growth, with compensation remaining within standard bands.

“Demand and compensation are rising sharply at the top end for AI architects, agent managers and AI-native leaders. Routine cognitive roles are facing increasing pricing pressure and risk of commoditisation,” Ganesh S Padmanabhan, VP – Recruitment Business at CIEL HR told businessline, adding that roles combining technical depth with responsibility for major AI projects enjoy the sharpest premiums. These include AI/Agent Architects, Agentic AI Engineers, AI Governance & Risk Specialists, Responsible AI Leads, and AI Product Managers, among others.

Generative AI Engineering and Machine Learning Operation roles set new salary benchmarks, with senior professionals earning ₹58–60 LPA and annual growth exceeded 18 per cent in GCCs, as per an earlier report by TeamLease. Salaries for senior-level Generative AI roles are expected to reach ₹33.5 LPA in FY27 from ₹28 LPA in FY25 in IT Product and services. Location also becomes a huge differentiator as metro cities report senior professionals in AI and Cybersecurity to command ₹45 to ₹48 LPA while Tier-1 cities report 20–30 per cent lower salaries for the same roles. Tier-2 cities report 30–40 per cent lower salaries than metros.

According to CIEL, clients are increasingly requesting such roles either for compliance management, ethics and enterprise risk or to scale AI agents across business functions on the delivery side. This effectively pushes middle layer jobs that focus on general execution towards capability-led models. Employees with business+AI skill-sets will have the upper-hand as they will be harder to replace and scarcer in the market. On the flipside, those lacking such skills face job security risks as IT companies are releasing employees that cannot be redeployed in the AI age.

In preparation for this shift, Infosys talked of a revised compensation framework with packages ranging from ₹10-21 LPA based on skillsets and role complexity in December 2025. Tech Mahindra talked of a new pricing model differentiating human labour and digital labour with Forrester. Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) reported nearly 2.17 lakh associates to have AI skills in the last quarter amidst the workforce shrinkage and Wipro reported a hiring hiatus for the remainder of FY26.

Published on January 25, 2026