Tata Consultancy Services is building a team of up to 8,900 forward-deployed engineers and hunting for AI acquisitions as it bets artificial intelligence will create new business rather than undermine outsourcing, two TCS executives told Reuters.
The strategy emerges amid investor concern that AI could disrupt India’s $315 billion IT services industry by reducing demand for engineering teams, shortening project timelines and squeezing prices as clients seek a share of productivity gains.
“We would be … ensuring that we have as many as 1% to 1.5% of our associates who could be what you would call FDEs,” CEO K Krithivasan said in an interview. TCS is India’s largest software services firm.
Krithivasan’s figures would translate to roughly 5,900 to 8,900 employees based on TCS’s end-June headcount. Krithivasan did not say whether the company would hire externally or retrain existing staff. Forward-deployed engineers embed with clients to accelerate AI adoption and tailor tools to business needs, a role that has emerged as a hiring bright spot in a sector grappling with AI-driven efficiency gains. The plan pits TCS against firms such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft, which have expanded hiring for forward-deployed engineers to help clients deploy AI tools.
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