Staffing firms see demand for tech talent back to pre-Covid-19 levels

Demand for technology professionals has increased to pre-Covid-19 levels, as more organisations move operations online and as global companies hire more talent at their India-based captive units, staffing agencies said.

There was a more than 60% jump in demand for Java full-stack developers in October and November and staffing firms for technology talent have also witnessed rising demand for professionals with skills such as data science, cybersecurity, Kubernetes, and other new-age digital technologies.

“The overall demand for tech employment has surpassed in terms of year-on-year growth - (November 2019 vs November 2020). The current demand for these technology skills is nearly 20% more than the pre-Covid-19 numbers,” Vijay Sivaram, chief executive officer, Quess IT Staffing, told ET.


Staffing firms say demand for technology talent has improved over the last couple of months, as new projects and expansion of existing contracts push companies to restart hiring that was stalled during the lockdown.

However, the India-centric technology services companies, captives and enterprises are focusing more on full-stack developers, cloud migration experts and other emerging technology skills.

“Increased digital transformation programmes that had three- to five-year plans have been significantly compressed to one year. So, more and more organisations moved to automation, started migrating to cloud. These developments have resulted in higher demand for consultancy, development and other roles,” said Sivaram.

Technology services companies account for the largest chunk of IT hiring in the country. These companies had slowed down hiring activity for at least five months and used available bench talent, said Sivaram.

“As their customers are increasing project sizes or asking them to do more, they are resuming hiring,” he said.

There are many opportunities from non-technology companies as well, said Rituparna Chakraborty, co-founder and executive vice-president, Teamlease.

“The technology talent demand is coming from all kinds of companies and not only IT services ones. And a lot of work coming to India, as captives are hiring more due to lack of clarity on immigration policies,” she said, adding that roles for cloud computing, technology platforms, cybersecurity have opened up.

Some roles are also being filled through internal reskilling.

“The demand that is coming today is not necessarily in line with the workforce IT companies have, so that needs to be filled up by reskilling,” Sivaram said.