AI jobs command premium pay as companies fill specialised roles

Artificial Intelligence is not just the biggest thing right now globally, it’s paying big too. Qualified AI professionals in the country are commanding as much as a 40-80% salary premium compared to traditional IT roles, experts and staffing firms told ET.

Roles such as AI research scientist, AI marketing specialist, chatbot specialists, cybersecurity AI, computer vision engineer, robotics engineer along with AI ethics specialist are high in demand as companies scramble to fill new and specialised roles in AI.

Other in-demand roles include prompt engineer, AI solutions architect, AI product manager, ML engineer, data scientist, AI governance policy analyst and chief AI officer (CAIO), which is a CXO role. Teamlease Digital, the technology staffing services firm estimates that overall demand for generative AI roles in India has soared ninefold

since January. Data from four leading job portals show that there are more than 45,000 AI-related job openings in
India currently, according to Quess IT Staffing. Experts say businesses are paying hefty salaries for AI talent recognising the need to rapidly adopt AI in their daily operations.

“We talk about AI replacing jobs, but actually in our tech industry, we have a talent gap, a capacity gap,” said Paul Mariott, president – Asia Pacific and Japan, SAP. “Right now, the gap is not closing fast enough. The gap actually potentially could get bigger if we don’t keep accelerating the investment into the universities to bring that long term talent supply into the marketplace.”

India’s second largest software services firm Infosys has trained close to 80% of its workforce in GenAI and the company is pivoting to a AI first model.

“In the AI-first approach, we are building our own capabilities and we are ready to train even more people as we bring them onboard,” said Infosys CEO and MD, Salil Parekh. On being asked if India will lose its talent edge with the kind of roles getting automated, Parekh said, that they don’t see there will be reduction in talent demand from India.

“Yes, Generative AI will have benefits, but we will also need to make sure it works across all the areas of the companies (and for that you will need people).”

Aye Aye AI

A 2024 study by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Access Partnership found that Indian workers with AI skills and expertise could see salary hikes of over 54%, with workers in IT (65%), research and development (62%), sales and marketing (59%), business operations (59%), and finance (59%) enjoying the highest pay bumps. Further, small and medium enterprises are willing to pay at least 56% more for AI-skilled talent, six percentage points higher than large-sized firms. “Generative AI offers an unprecedented opportunity to transform businesses across India,” said Amit Mehta, head of AWS Training and Certification, AWS India.

Top skills employers in India demand currently and in five years’ time is AI/ML development, the study found. But while hiring AI-skilled talent is a priority for more than 9 in 10 (96%) employers, 79% said they cannot find the AI talent they need.

Jobs of the future

“We’re hiring for jobs today that didn’t exist as recently as last year,” said Deepak Pargaonkar, vice president, solution engineering, Salesforce India. While AI takes over repetitive jobs, it frees up human potential to do other value added and creative jobs, he added. “While the jobs of the future will fundamentally be around AI architecture, design and innovation, at the same time, a whole new world around AI engineering, AI instructors, AI trainers, data capabilities, as well as AI ethics specialists will open up,” said Pargaonkar.

India has the second-highest installed AI talent base, with 420,000 employees. Yet, there is a significant demand-supply gap of 51%, requiring 600,000 professionals, Krishna Vij, business head of Teamlease Digital said. Globally, the demand for these roles is higher, especially in the US, China, and Europe, which lead in AI adoption and innovation. While
India is rapidly catching up, the global demand remains higher due to more established AI infrastructures and investments in these regions, she added.

Do or die

“The situation currently is as profound as it was in the late 90s, when the Internet burst onto the scene, and gave rise to unforeseen applications and fundamental new innovations,” said Arvind Thakur, former vice chairman and MD, NIIT Technologies. For some industries, reskilling can be do or die.

For instance, Ganesh Natarajan, former CEO of Zensar Technologies and executive chairman, 5F World, said with advances in AI, the IT industry can be transformed, accelerated or eliminated.“Over the next five years, 80% of the current role holders will have to either reskill themselves to use AI, or they’ll be eliminated,” Natarajan said, as most IT services roles can be automated. He added that people who would be protected from this churn would include
those doing intelligent consulting work, building information architectures, designing user experiences, and designing AI for organisations.

IT businesses can probably make do with 40% less people or experience, as AI enhances productivity, Natarajan said. And while employees who are at the top of the AI skills pyramid could be paid about 20-30% more, those at the bottom would become cheaper, with overall improvement in costs of about 20%. The human factor, however, will remain front and centre. “As we look towards the future of work, AI technology emerges not merely as a tool, but as a transformative force… In this AI-enhanced landscape, the key is not to compete with AI, but to complement it,” said Vineet Nayar, former CEO, HCLTech and chairman, Sampark Foundation.