Why Choose IT as a Career in India: 2026 Guide

India’s IT sector employed 5.8 million people by FY25 and added 126,000 net new jobs that year, per NASSCOM’s annual strategic review. Those numbers answer the headline question before we get to the nuance: the sector is still hiring, and the entry points for a 2026 batch student are concrete.

Why the IT sector keeps growing in India

The scale is worth stating plainly. According to the NASSCOM strategic review published in February 2025, India’s IT-BPM sector is targeting USD 300 billion in revenue in FY26 and its workforce crossed 5.8 million in FY25. India’s IT job market also grew 16% in 2025, per workforce analytics firm Quess Corp.

Three structural reasons account for this sustained demand.

First, every industry runs on software. Automobile companies, banks, hospitals, logistics firms, consumer goods brands: all of them hire engineers for internal IT and automation. The IT sector is not just the large NASSCOM-member companies; it includes the technology functions inside every large Indian enterprise. Students from non-CS branches consistently underestimate how wide this net is.

Second, Global Capability Centres have become a major hiring channel. These are technology delivery centres set up by multinationals inside India, working on live product development rather than just maintenance. They tend to pay higher than service IT at the fresher level and offer faster feedback loops on real systems.

Third, India’s engineering college output outpaces absorption in core-domain roles in mechanical, civil, and electrical infrastructure, but not in software. The gap between supply of qualified software engineers and demand remains positive for job-seekers with the right skills.

What IT jobs pay freshers in India in 2026

Pay in IT splits cleanly across three tiers: service IT companies with structured campus hiring tracks, mid-tier product companies, and Global Capability Centres. The table below uses figures from NASSCOM data, TCS NQT documentation, and Infosys’s FY26 hiring announcement.

Company / Track	Package (FY26)	Branch eligibility
TCS Ninja (NQT qualifier)	₹3.36 LPA	CSE, IT, ECE, EEE, and other branches
TCS Digital	₹7.3 LPA	Same; higher NQT score required
Infosys Digital Specialist Engineer	₹7 LPA	CSE, IT, ECE, EEE
Infosys Specialist Programmer L1	₹11 LPA	AI-focused; ECE/EEE eligible
Infosys Specialist Programmer L2	₹16 LPA	AI-focused; ECE/EEE eligible
Infosys Specialist Programmer L3	₹21 LPA	Highest fresher package on record
Mid-tier product company (typical)	₹12 LPA and above	Usually CSE/IT-first, skills-assessed

The Infosys salary data above comes from the company’s FY26 off-campus hiring announcement, verified by Business Standard in December 2025. Infosys Group CHRO Shaji Mathew confirmed packages up to ₹21 LPA for Specialist Programmer roles as part of the company’s AI-first hiring push.

A few things the table does not show: the Ninja track is the largest volume entry point and where most campus hires from Tier-2 and Tier-3 colleges land. Digital and Specialist Programmer slots are fewer in number and more selective. The service IT starting salary for the base track has grown slowly over the past decade; the upper tracks are where the movement is.

Which engineering branches can get IT jobs

CSE and IT branches have the most direct path into IT jobs, but they are not the only ones eligible. Infosys explicitly lists ECE and EEE as qualifying branches for both the Digital Specialist Engineer and the Specialist Programmer tracks in its FY26 hiring. TCS NQT is open to any engineering branch. Wipro and Capgemini also accept circuit-branch graduates into their IT training programmes.

The practical barrier for ECE or EEE students is not eligibility on paper; it is the aptitude and coding assessment. Companies do not lower the assessment bar for non-CSE applicants. The NQT and similar campus placement evaluation tests assess the same quantitative aptitude and programming sections regardless of branch. Students from ECE or EEE who cover the same coding and aptitude curriculum as their CSE peers clear these gates at comparable rates.

Branch-based thinking is also narrowing in the job market. Companies are assessing on demonstrated output more than on degree labels. A GitHub profile with a working project carries more weight at interview than a branch distinction or a half-point CGPA difference.

How AI is reshaping IT entry-level roles

The AI shift in IT hiring is real, but its practical meaning is more specific than the headlines suggest. Not every IT job in 2026 requires AI expertise. The TCS Ninja track still hires primarily on aptitude and basic coding. The shift is concentrated at the higher-paying tracks and at product companies.

In FY26, 60% of TCS’s fresher hires were AI-skilled, up from 10 to 15% three years prior, per TCS CHRO Sudeep Kunnumal at the AI Impact Summit in March 2026. This does not mean that the base of Ninja-track hiring was eliminated. It means the company is building toward a workforce that defaults to AI-augmented workflows, and that students who arrive with these skills get first preference at the higher-paying tracks.

For a student targeting Digital or Specialist tracks, or product company roles, four skill additions matter:

• Python: the dominant language for data tasks, automation, and ML workflows across all sectors
• SQL: still present in most digital-track and data-facing role interviews
• Familiarity with at least one LLM API (such as OpenAI or Gemini): now the baseline for AI-adjacent roles even at service IT companies
• One deployed project: an app, a data pipeline, or an API that runs end-to-end in a public GitHub repository

These are additive to core aptitude preparation, not a replacement for it. The aptitude books that build quantitative reasoning and verbal ability remain the baseline for the written test gate; the AI skill layer comes on top, for candidates targeting the tracks that pay more.

The difference between service IT and product companies

Service IT companies (TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, Capgemini) hire in high volume on campus, run structured training programmes, and rotate freshers across client projects. The fresher-level salary ceiling is lower at the base track, but hiring volume is higher and the on-campus access is more reliable. For a student at a Tier-2 or Tier-3 college in Coimbatore, Bhopal, or Kochi, service IT is the most accessible entry point into the profession.

Product companies and GCCs set their own hiring timelines, often hire in smaller batches, and expect stronger coding ability from the first day. Selection ratios are lower and interviews are more technical. Companies like D.E. Shaw run structured, multi-round campus processes with a very different assessment structure from service IT drives; the D.E. Shaw campus recruitment process covers what those rounds look like.

The career arc also differs. Service IT offers exposure to varied clients and structured upskilling, especially through internal certification programmes. Product companies typically offer faster feedback loops on real systems and sometimes more autonomy at the junior level. The right choice depends on what kind of work environment and learning pace suits you. Most students from Tier-2 and Tier-3 colleges start at service IT and move laterally within two to three years.

Building toward the higher-paying tracks

The sequence that makes sense for a student preparing now: solid aptitude foundation first (it opens the widest set of campus opportunities), then Python and SQL to compete for Digital tracks, then one hands-on AI project to be competitive for Specialist-tier and product company roles.

The aptitude layer is the gate that decides whether you get an offer at all. Once that base is secure, the skill additions that widen your options are specific and learnable in a reasonable time frame. The TCS NQT salary data shows a clear difference between the Ninja track at ₹3.36 LPA and the Digital track at ₹7.3 LPA. That gap is partly explained by NQT score and partly by demonstrated programming ability in the interview stage.

TinkerLLM is worth considering at the third step. The salary difference between the Digital track and the Specialist Programmer tier is where AI fluency becomes the deciding variable, and spending ₹299 to build a first LLM-backed project and test that skill before committing to a longer programme is a reasonable entry point.