India’s tech industry is entering a phase that insiders are calling a “salary reset cycle.”
Over the past three months, multiple IT majors—TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, Accenture—and high-growth product companies have quietly initiated compensation changes that redefine how engineering roles are valued.
According to internal HR documents reviewed by CS FOR ALL News and conversations with senior delivery managers, the next financial year will bring a major shift:
Salary will depend less on years of experience and more on provable skills that coexist with AI.
This marks the biggest compensation model change since the post-COVID tech boom.
🔹 Why this shift is happening now
Three structural changes are pushing companies to rethink “experience-based salaries”:
1. AI tools have automated low-complexity engineering
Managers report that tools like GitHub Copilot, ChatGPT, and custom internal AI assistants have reduced engineering time by 30–60% for routine work.
This has made many mid-level roles redundant unless reskilled.
2. Clients want “lean delivery teams”
Global clients now explicitly ask for:
- Smaller teams
- Faster delivery
- Higher productivity
This reduces opportunities for engineers whose work can be automated.
3. Salary gaps between actual contribution and compensation
A senior delivery head at a Bengaluru-based IT major told us:
“Many 6–10 year engineers have salaries that don’t match their productivity in the AI era. Companies will restructure quietly instead of announcing layoffs.”
🔹 Which roles are losing relevance
Companies are categorizing roles into AI-replaceable, AI-augmented, and AI-critical.
Roles at risk
- Legacy backend development (CRUD-heavy)
- Manual testing
- L1/L2 support
- Basic frontend roles
- Script-based automation
- Low-complexity maintenance engineering
These roles are experiencing no new headcount across most delivery units.
Roles gaining high demand
- Platform Engineering
- Data Engineering
- AI/ML Engineering
- DevOps / SRE
- Cloud Architecture
- Mobile Engineering (native)
- Security Engineering
- System Design-heavy backend engineering
These are becoming the new salary drivers.
🔹 How salary structures are changing
Beginning 2025, several companies are implementing:
1. Skill-tiered bands
Instead of paying a flat salary per experience bracket, salaries will depend on certified, provable, AI-aligned skillsets.
2. Variable pay linked to AI-based KPIs
Teams will be graded on:
- Automation contribution
- Code efficiency
- Velocity improvements
- Architecture impact
3. Mid-level salary compression
The 7–10 YOE range will see the biggest corrections.
Entry-level salary will increase slightly, while mid-level salary growth will flatten unless reskilled.
🔹 Fresher hiring will increase—but with a catch
Companies are preparing to hire more freshers in 2025, but only 3 job categories will dominate:
- AI engineering support
- Cloud + DevOps apprentices
- Data engineering associates
General-purpose developer roles will shrink drastically.
🔹 What engineers should do right now
To survive the salary reset:
- Upskill in system design
- Shift to cloud + DevOps technologies
- Learn data engineering fundamentals
- Understand AI tooling deeply
- Move from “task execution” to “architecture ownership”
- Document measurable business impact
- Build a portfolio demonstrating AI-augmented productivity
Recruiters told CS FOR ALL News that engineers who can prove AI-leveraged efficiency are already being shortlisted at 3× higher rates.
🔹 The bottom line
India’s IT sector is entering its most significant transition since outsourcing began.
AI is not eliminating engineering—it’s eliminating inefficient engineering.
The companies that adapt fastest will lead the next decade, and the engineers who emb