Demand for AI jobs up 11% in India amid talent scarcity

New Delhi: The demand for artificial intelligence (AI) talent has grown 11 per cent in India over the last six months, driven by job demands in sectors like IT, retail, telecom, BFSI and advertising/market research sectors, a report showed on Monday.

The Indian job market will witness a 22 per cent churn over the next five years with top emerging roles coming from AI, machine learning, and data segments, according to the report by foundit (previously Monster India & APAC). When it comes to AI-driven jobs, the IT sector is leading with 29 per cent, followed by advertising, market research and PR sector at 17 per cent and retail at 11 per cent in the country. "Adoption of tech such as ChatGPT has emerged as a game changer in the tech world. While there are several dialogues regarding job losses with the intervention of AI, the same is expected to create newer roles and increase employment opportunities," said Sekhar Garisa, CEO, foundit.

Although there is huge hiring demand for AI-related roles, there is a scarcity of talent as well. The growing demand for these roles across industries has created a setback in hiring due to the lack of specialised skills in professionals.

"While there is a lot of new talent in the market, organisations are finding it challenging to hire a candidate with the right fit for the job," Garisa added. The top 10 in-demand jobs and skills are software engineers, data engineers, data scientists, python developers, marketing analytics consultants, AWS data architects, machine learning engineers, AI product managers, BI developers and content curators/proofreaders.

In the current scenario, AI and automation are acting more as catalysts than threats for professionals in the industry. "It is necessary to keep up with emerging trends as every role becomes obsolete beyond a certain period of time without new learnings. Hence, upskilling is a long-term investment for career progression," said Garisa.