TCS adds 9,279 employees in Q1, marks second straight quarter of hiring

Tata Consultancy Services added 9,279 employees in the first quarter, signalling improved visibility on deal pipelines despite persistent macroeconomic uncertainty and AI-led disruption

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) added 9,279 employees in the first quarter, marking the second straight period when the company increased its headcount after the massive layoffs last financial year.

 

TCS’ total headcount stood at 593,798 at the end of June. It added 2,356 people between January and March.

 

The headcount addition marks a good start to the year when macroeconomic uncertainties persist and the environment remains volatile. Still it means the company has better visibility into deal pipelines.

 

CEO K Krithivasan said white collar jobs are unlikely to go down because of AI. “We hire whenever we feel we’ll have enough demand and for specific skills. I don’t believe AI will reduce overall headcount.”

 

 

“This quarter, we completed annual salary increments for all associates globally and aligned salary structures with the new India labour Code requirements. We continue to invest into AI infrastructure, next-generation skill development platforms, to enable our people to be future ready,”  Sudeep Kunnumal, chief HR officer, said. 

 

In April, India’s biggest IT services company said it will hire about 25,000 engineering graduates from college campuses, down sharply from its average of 40,000, stoking concerns about jobs in the IT sector.

 

Kunnumal said in the fourth quarter, TCS onboarded 14,000 campus graduate. “As we speak we are visiting top universities across the country and hiring top talent.”  

 

TCS’ voluntary attrition inched down to 13.6 per cent from 13.8 per cent, a year ago.

 

When asked about the demand for forward deployed engineers (FDE), Chief Operating Officer Aarthi Subramanian said the company has had a concept of rapid build engineers, which is similar to a FDE.

 

“The difference being that a forward-deployment engineer would have multiple skills but would be very deep. Most of these FDE deployments are in a different kind of project where you start with a problem that you solve for and then you deploy the squad and the engineers. So, these are specialist engineers who are multi-skilled but deep on one particular skill,” Subramanian added.