AI talent push drives role-adjacent reskilling across India GCCs

India’s Global Capability Centres are increasingly shifting from external hiring to role‑adjacent reskilling to build AI and digital talent, with hiring demand concentrated on mid‑career professionals, a report said on Wednesday.

The report from Quess Corp said 56 per cent of GCC hiring demand in the first quarter of FY 2027 was concentrated in professionals with four to 12 years’ experience, and organisations are increasingly building new career pathways through role-adjacent reskilling.

"India's Global Capability Centres are increasingly creating AI and digital talent internally by enabling professionals with adjacent technical skills to transition into emerging technology roles," the report said.

Rather than relying solely on external hiring, organisations are building specialised capabilities by enabling professionals with adjacent technical skills to transition into emerging technology roles, it added.

Backend Developers are moving into Applied AI Engineer roles, Data Scientists into ML and Model Operations Engineering, Data Engineers into AI Data Platform Engineering.

Further, Cloud Engineers are shifting to Platform Engineering, QA Automation Engineers into Autonomous QA Engineering, Cybersecurity Analysts into Cloud Security Engineering, and DevOps Engineers into DevSecOps Engineering.

Overall hiring remained steady during the quarter, growing by around 5–6 per cent quarter-on-quarter, with demand concentrated across AI, Data & Analytics, Platform Engineering, Cloud & Infrastructure Engineering, and Cybersecurity as organisations prioritised critical digital capabilities, the report added.

“AI, Data & Analytics has emerged as the fastest-growing capability, expanding by around 10 per cent and accounting for nearly 17 per cent of hiring demand. At the same time, talent gaps of up to 40 per cent across AI and data roles are fundamentally changing how organisations build their workforce," said Kapil Joshi, CEO, Quess IT Staffing.

Smaller GCCs record the fastest hiring growth while larger centres continue to account for the biggest share of demand.

GCCs with fewer than 500 employees recorded the fastest hiring growth at around 8 per cent quarter-on-quarter, supported by new GCC establishments and specialised AI and digital capability teams. Meanwhile, organisations with 1,000–5,000 employees continued to account for around 40 per cent of total GCC hiring demand.

Professional Services & Consulting recorded the highest quarter-on-quarter growth at around 9 per cent and accounted for 10.3 per cent of total hiring demand. Technology & Product followed with around 7 per cent growth, while Manufacturing & Industrial remained the largest hiring sector with a 25.1 per cent share.

BFSI accounted for 20.9 per cent of hiring demand, while Telecom & Networks was the only sector to record a contraction during the quarter.