Fireblaze Fireblaze AI Career Intelligence
AI Skill Index™
of India
What the published research actually says about AI skills, hiring and pay in India. Every figure names its source, its date and the group it was measured on.
Last reviewed 2026-07-30 • Reviewed monthly. Each figure carries the date of the source it came from, not the date of this page.
How to read this index
- Every number on this page names its source, its date, and the population it was measured on.
- We do not publish a composite score. The underlying figures come from surveys, job-posting indices, platform data and company announcements, which cannot be responsibly weighted into one number.
- We separate what was measured from what was projected. A forecast is always labelled as a forecast.
- Where we could not find a credible source, we say so instead of estimating. The gaps list is published alongside the data.
- Vendor-announced numbers are labelled as self-reported. Where a source has a commercial interest in the thing it measures, we disclose it.
01 • Hiring
AI Hiring Index
AI and machine learning roles were the fastest-growing hiring segment on Naukri in June 2026, up 25% year on year, while overall white-collar hiring rose 6% and IT services hiring fell 3%. Measured Naukri (Info Edge), 2026-07-03
Share of Indian job postings that mention AI
The clearest trend line available for India. Indeed's analysts caution that Indeed's India data skews toward the tech sector, so these shares are higher than the whole labour market.
Measured Indeed Hiring Lab, 2025-10-25 Indeed and NASSCOM, 2026-05-22
Share of postings mentioning AI, by occupation
Postings mentioning AI, September 2025.
| Data and analytics | 38.6% | |
| Software development | 22.8% | |
| Insurance | 18.2% | |
| Scientific research | 17.0% | |
| Industrial engineering | 17.0% | |
| Mechanical engineering | 11.0% | |
| Electrical engineering | 9.2% |
Healthcare and retail are not broken out by this source. Indeed Hiring Lab, 2025-10-25
Fastest-growing jobs in India
LinkedIn ranks these by growth rate, not by volume, and does not publish a growth percentage for India. The rank shift between two editions of the same methodology is the meaningful signal.
| Role | 2026 rank | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Prompt Engineer | #1 | New entry at number 1 |
| AI Engineer | #2 | Up 10 places |
| Manager of AI | #4 | New entry |
Only three AI roles appear in India's top 25. Data Scientist, Data Engineer, Data Analyst and Machine Learning Engineer do not appear on India's list at all. A fast-growing job title is not the same as a high-volume one.
LinkedIn News India, 2026-01-08 LinkedIn News India, 2025-01-15
Sectors where hiring fell
June 2026 vs June 2025.
| Banking and financial services | -12% |
| Education | -4% |
| IT and software services | -3% |
| Hospitality | -3% |
IT and software services hiring fell 3% in the same month AI and machine learning hiring rose 25%. The AI growth is a narrow band inside an otherwise flat sector, not a general IT hiring boom.
Hiring change by experience level
June 2026 vs June 2025.
| 0 to 3 years | +8% | |
| 4 to 7 years | +2% | |
| 8 to 12 years | +7% | |
| 13 to 15 years | +12% | |
| 16 years and above | +9% |
Mid-career hiring at 4 to 7 years was the weakest band.
02 • Skills
Top AI Skills
Developer tool usage
Percentage of respondents who used each technology in the past year.
| Docker | 71.1% | +17 percentage points year on year, the largest single-year move in its category | |
| SQL | 58.6% | ||
| Python | 57.9% | ||
| AWS | 43.3% | ||
| Azure | 26.3% |
Measured Stack Overflow, 2025-07 • All respondents to the Stack Overflow 2025 Developer Survey, about 49,000 self-selected developers across 177 countries.
India skill signals
Where India-specific evidence exists. Expand any skill for the full figure and its source.
QueryingRanked the number 1 fastest-growing engineering skill in India
Ranked the number 1 fastest-growing engineering skill in India. Measured
LinkedIn publishes a rank order only, with no growth percentage or denominator.
LLMOpsRanked number 4 among fastest-growing engineering skills in India
Ranked number 4 among fastest-growing engineering skills in India. Measured
Rank only.
Workflow automationRanked number 5 among fastest-growing engineering skills in India
Ranked number 5 among fastest-growing engineering skills in India. Measured
Rank only.
AutoMLRanked number 9 among fastest-growing engineering skills in India
Ranked number 9 among fastest-growing engineering skills in India. Measured
Rank only.
Machine learningAI and machine learning hiring rose 25% year on year in June 2026, the...
AI and machine learning hiring rose 25% year on year in June 2026, the fastest-growing segment. Measured
Generative AIIndia leads the world on relative AI skill penetration at an index of ...
India leads the world on relative AI skill penetration at an index of 3.0, meaning AI skills appear on Indian member profiles at three times the global average. Measured
Derived from LinkedIn member profiles. The United States is second and Germany third.
AI agents17% of developers, about 8,323 respondents, use or develop AI agents a...
17% of developers, about 8,323 respondents, use or develop AI agents as part of their work. Measured
Global, not India.
MCP (Model Context Protocol)More than 10,000 published MCP servers
More than 10,000 published MCP servers. Measured
An industry consortium claim, not an independent count. No credible adoption percentage exists.
Skills we could not score
These appear on every list of in-demand AI skills. None of them has a source we would publish.
Power BI
No authoritative, dated, methodologically transparent source measures Power BI skill demand, in India or globally. Job-board listing counts are snapshots that include duplicates. A widely-copied claim that Power BI appears in 72% of Indian data analyst jobs has no named dataset, sample or date behind it, so we do not repeat it.
Deep Learning
No major source tracks deep learning as a skill distinct from wider AI and machine learning categories. Publishing a number here would mean inventing one.
LangChain
No developer survey with a stated population measures LangChain usage. The figures in circulation are the vendor's own marketing or GitHub stars, which measure popularity rather than adoption.
Wider context
- AI and big data ranked the number 1 fastest-growing skill worldwide for 2025 to 2030 Projection World Economic Forum, 2025-01
- About 39% of workers' core skills are expected to be transformed or outdated by 2030 Projection World Economic Forum, 2025-01
- Generative AI course enrolments rose 234% year on year, the fastest-growing skill in Coursera's history Measured Coursera, 2026-01-21
Measured among enterprise learners whose employer bought Coursera, not the general workforce. - India's AI talent concentration grew 120% between 2019 and 2025, the second fastest globally Measured Stanford HAI, 2026-04-13
- India recorded a net AI talent outflow of -16.9 in 2025, the largest of any country measured Measured Stanford HAI, 2026-04-13
03 • Pay
Salary Intelligence
By experience level
| Experience | Average Total Compensation | Sample | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 1 year | ₹5,95,255 | 5.95 lakh | |
| 1 to 4 years | ₹10,05,147 | 10.05 lakh | |
| 5 to 9 years | ₹18,37,657 | 18.38 lakh | |
| 10 to 19 years | ₹25,08,304 | 25.08 lakh | |
| 20 years and above | ₹23,34,782 | 23.35 lakh |
All experience levels: ₹10,17,652 • total sample n=1267 • PayScale, 2026-07
Every band reconciles exactly against its stated percentage difference from the role average.
| Experience | Average Total Compensation | Sample | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 1 year | ₹4,58,375 | 4.58 lakh | |
| 1 to 4 years | ₹6,24,094 | 6.24 lakh | |
| 5 to 9 years | ₹10,98,353 | 10.98 lakh | |
| 10 to 19 years | ₹12,06,283 | 12.06 lakh | |
| 20 years and above | ₹16,75,832 | 16.76 lakh |
All experience levels: ₹7,42,591 • total sample n=970 • PayScale, 2026-07
The most internally consistent experience table in this dataset.
| Experience | Average Total Compensation | Sample | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 1 year | ₹4,13,462 | 4.13 lakh | n=576 |
| 1 to 4 years | ₹5,65,999 | 5.66 lakh | n=1588 |
| 5 to 9 years | Not published | +46% versus the role average | |
| 10 to 19 years | Not published | +86% versus the role average | |
| 20 years and above | Not published |
All experience levels: ₹5,77,472 • total sample n=2389 • PayScale, 2026-07
Only the early bands have retrievable rupee figures. For the later bands the source publishes a percentage difference from the role average but not an absolute figure, and we do not multiply it out, because that would be our arithmetic rather than the source's.
| Experience | Average Total Compensation | Sample | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 1 year | ₹5,96,082 | 5.96 lakh | n=39 |
| 1 to 4 years | ₹8,40,657 | 8.41 lakh | n=156 |
| 5 to 9 years | Not published | +102% versus the role average | |
| 10 to 19 years | Not published | +184% versus the role average | |
| 20 years and above | Not published |
All experience levels: ₹10,22,861 • total sample n=232 • PayScale, 2026-07
Same limitation as Data Analyst. Early-band samples are small at 39 and 156 respondents.
Average base salary, all levels
| Data Scientist | ₹11,98,281 | n=502 |
| Cloud Engineer | ₹10,66,566 | n=167 |
| Business Analyst | ₹9,22,588 | n=895 |
| Data Analyst | ₹6,55,556 | n=839 |
Role ranges
| Role | Entry / range | Senior |
|---|---|---|
| AI / Machine Learning Engineer | 7.0 to 8.5 lakh (AI and cloud freshers) | 43 lakh |
| Senior generative AI and MLOps | 58 to 60 lakh | |
| Chief AI Officer | 2 to 2.5 crore | |
| Cybersecurity | 28 to 33.5 lakh |
Salary movement across the market
| India average salary increase, 2025 actual | 8.9% | |
| India average salary increase, 2026 projected | 9.1% | Projection |
| Technology consulting and services, 2026 projected | 6.6% | Projection |
| Technology platform and products, 2026 projected | 9.4% | Projection |
| Global Capability Centres, 2026 projected | 9.3% | Projection |
| Attrition, 2025 | 16.2% |
Aon, 2026-02-24 • Over 1,400 organisations across 45 industries.
Where we have no salary data
Prompt Engineer
No survey-grade salary source exists for India. The only platform figure we found had a sample of 11 people, which is far too small to publish. The figures circulating on training-company blogs (typically 6 to 12 lakh entry, 20 lakh and above senior) trace back to marketing content with no stated methodology, so we do not repeat them. This is notable because Prompt Engineer is simultaneously the number 1 fastest-growing job title in India by LinkedIn's ranking.
AI Engineer, mid-career
Entry and senior figures exist from one source. No source publishes 2-year, 5-year or 10-year bands for this title.
Cloud Engineer, by experience band
The one mid-career figure we found came from a sample of 18 and implied an implausible jump over the early-career figure, so we have excluded it as a small-sample artefact.
Salary by city, for any AI role
No credible source publishes AI salary broken down by Indian city. Every city-by-city AI salary table we found was on a content-marketing blog with no methodology.
04 • Geography
Where the AI Jobs Are
Share of India's AI job postings
Based on more than 64,500 active AI-tagged listings on Naukri. The top three cities account for about 70% of all AI openings.
| Bengaluru | 25.4% | |
| Delhi NCR | 24.8% | |
| Mumbai | 19.2% | |
| Hyderabad | 12.5% | |
| Pune | 9.6% | |
| Chennai | 6.4% | |
| Kolkata | 2.1% |
Measured CBRE, 2026-02-19 • December 2025
Nagpur, Indore and Ahmedabad do not appear in this data. They fall below the source's reporting threshold, which means their share is small, not that it is zero.
Hiring growth by city
Year-on-year change in the Naukri JobSpeak index. All roles, not AI-specific.
| City | Feb 2026 | Mar 2026 | May 2026 | Jun 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Indore | +11% | +10% | +12% | +15% |
| Hyderabad | +17% | +10% | +6% | +11% |
| Chennai | +9% | +11% | -0.2% | +10.3% |
| Nagpur | +11% | +7% | -2% | +9% |
| Bengaluru | +12% | +9% | +2% | +7% |
| Pune | +13% | +11% | -1% | +4% |
| Ahmedabad | +6% | +12% | +0.2% | +3.9% |
| Delhi NCR | +9% | +8% | -2% | +1% |
| Mumbai | +6% | +4% | -6% | 0% |
Info Edge / Naukri, 2026-06 • This is all-role hiring, not AI hiring. No source publishes AI-specific hiring growth by city.
Global Capability Centre footprint
India has 2,117 GCCs across 3,728 units employing about 2.36 million professionals. More than 1,200 GCCs have AI or machine learning capability, and about 250,000 GCC professionals work in AI, roughly 28% of the global GCC AI talent pool.
| City | Units | Talent share |
|---|---|---|
| Bengaluru | 1,080+ | 34% |
| Hyderabad | 515+ | 14% |
| Delhi NCR | 490+ | 10% |
| Pune | 475+ | 13% |
| Chennai | 405+ | 12% |
| Mumbai | 375+ | 11% |
Zinnov and NASSCOM, 2026-07-02 • FY2026, data as of March 2026
Nagpur, Indore and Ahmedabad are not among the six cities that hold roughly 90% of India's GCC units.
The tier-2 shift is real, but smaller than the headlines suggest
- Emerging cities saw 42% growth in GCC job openings, against 19% in the metros Measured ANSR, 2026-05-26
- Tier-2 cities now account for about 15% of all GCC hiring, growing at roughly twice the metro rate Measured ANSR, 2026-05-26
- Attrition runs 8 to 12% in tier-2 cities against 18 to 22% in the metros Measured ANSR, 2026-05-26
A widely-copied claim that Nagpur and other non-metro cities recorded over 50% IT hiring growth in the first half of 2025 appears on an industry-body page with no source attribution, and is contradicted by the only measured data available: Naukri's index puts Nagpur between -2% and +11% across the months we checked. We do not repeat that claim.
Nagpur: what the data actually shows
There is no published AI or data-science hiring figure for Nagpur, from any source we could find. Rather than fill that gap with an estimate, here is what is verifiable.
IT and ITES companies with units operational in the MIHAN Special Economic Zone
Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, HCL Technologies, Tech Mahindra, Hexaware Technologies, GlobalLogic India, InfoCepts Technologies, ADCC Infocom, SmartData Enterprises, Altius Customer Services and Sagacious IP.
Measured Government of India, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Office of the Development Commissioner, undated • From the Government of India's official operational-units register, which lists each unit with its Letter of Approval number. The page carries no publication date.
Hiring growth in Nagpur, year on year
+11% in February 2026, +7% in March, -2% in May, +9% in June. Broadly in line with the national average rather than ahead of it.
Measured Info Edge / Naukri, 2026-06 • All roles, not AI-specific.
Maharashtra's GCC Policy 2025 names Nagpur as a target city
The policy targets 400 new GCCs and 4 lakh high-skilled jobs statewide, and explicitly names Nagpur, Nashik and Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar as tier-2 cities it intends to bring into the global GCC landscape.
Projection Government of Maharashtra, 2025-11-03 • A stated policy objective, not a measured outcome.
What is not available
- No IT-sector-specific employment figure for Nagpur exists. The MIHAN employment figures of roughly 1.16 to 1.27 lakh are all-sector, covering aerospace, pharmaceuticals, logistics, food processing and power as well as IT, and include indirect employment. Attributing them to IT would be wrong.
- No AI or data-science hiring figure for Nagpur exists at any level.
- Software export figures cannot be separated out for Nagpur. The government's technology parks body reports only a jurisdiction total covering Pune, Nagpur, Nashik, Kolhapur, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar and Mumbai together.
- Nagpur does not appear in any of the serious city rankings we reviewed: not in the GCC city breakdown, not in the AI-postings city list, and not in either study of emerging tech cities.
Local press has fact-checked the official MIHAN employment claims and found the widely-repeated figure of 90 operational companies to be inflated, with roughly 30 units functioning inside the SEZ. We reference this because an index that only reports flattering numbers about its own city is not an index.
05 • Tools
AI Tool Adoption
Developer environment usage
Percentage of all survey respondents using each tool
| Cursor | 17.9% | |
| Claude Code | 9.7% |
Stack Overflow, 2025-07 • 26,143 respondents to the development environment question.
Tool use among developers who build with AI agents
Percentage of agent-building developers using each tool
| ChatGPT | 81.7% | |
| Gemini | 47.4% | |
| Claude Code | 40.8% | |
| Perplexity | 16.2% |
Stack Overflow, 2025-07 • 8,323 respondents who use or develop AI agents as part of their work. This is a much narrower group than the table above.
Company-announced scale
Figures announced by the companies themselves
| Gemini | 950 million monthly active users Stated in Alphabet's Q2 2026 earnings communications, July 2026. The freshest first-party figure available. | |
| ChatGPT | 900 million weekly active users Announced February 2026. Weekly actives, a different measure from monthly actives. | |
Independent consumer ranking
By web visits and mobile monthly actives, January 2026 data
| ChatGPT | Number 1 on web and mobile, about 2.7 times larger than the second-placed app on web | |
| Gemini | Number 2 on web and mobile | |
| Cursor | Retained a top-50 position on the web list | |
| Perplexity | Present in the top 50 and continuing to grow on web. No user figure disclosed. | |
Disclosure: The publisher of this ranking is an active investor in the sector.
Andreessen Horowitz, 2026-03-09 • Web from Similarweb unique monthly visits, mobile from Sensor Tower monthly actives.
Individual datapoints
| Windsurf | Used by 5% of professional developers | Different denominator again: this is the professional-developer cut, not all respondents. | Stack Overflow, 2025-07 |
| Windsurf | 82 million US dollars annual recurring revenue, 350-plus enterprise customers | Self-reported by the acquiring company in July 2025. Over a year old and predates the product's trajectory since acquisition. | Cognition, 2025-07-14 |
| Lovable | Raised 330 million US dollars at a 6.6 billion valuation | Verified funding news. Valuation measures investor conviction, not how many people use the product. Lovable publishes no user numbers and appears in no independent developer survey. | TechCrunch, 2025-12-18 |
| ChatGPT | Used by 41% of developers, down from 49% the previous year | 24,534 developers across 194 countries. This appears to contradict the 81.7% figure above, but does not: the denominators are entirely different. | JetBrains, 2025-10 |
Tools with no usable data
Bolt
No independent survey measures it. It appears in neither of the two major developer surveys. The best vendor claim is over a year old and counts registered signups, which is not active usage.
Claude, consumer monthly actives
Anthropic does not publish a consumer user total. A figure circulating on statistics-aggregator sites could not be verified against its claimed source.
Perplexity, user counts and query volumes
Every figure in circulation traces only to statistics-aggregator sites with no primary source. One of those sites itself concedes the company has not released a comparable figure. Only the survey percentage above is usable.
Any composite popularity score
No source publishes one, and the inputs cannot be responsibly weighted. We did not construct one.
06 • Forecast
What Others Project
- 2026
About 382,000 AI-linked roles posted in India, a 32% increase
From 290,256 in calendar 2025
Projection foundit (formerly Monster APAC & ME), 2026-01-13 • Arithmetically consistent with the same source's measured 2025 base. Read via secondary coverage.
- 2027
India's AI talent pool exceeds 1.25 million people
Up from 600,000 to 650,000 in 2022
Projection Deloitte India and NASSCOM, 2024-08-20 • The best-sourced India AI talent projection available, taken from the primary release. Published August 2024, so its window is now close to current, which makes it checkable rather than speculative.
- 2030
About 39% of workers' core skills are transformed or outdated
Projection World Economic Forum, 2025-01
- 2030
170 million jobs created and 92 million displaced, a net gain of 78 million
Projection World Economic Forum, 2025-01 • Global, not India. We could not verify the India-specific figures from this report because the publisher's site blocked automated access, so we do not quote them.
- 2030
AI and big data is the number 1 fastest-growing skill worldwide
Projection World Economic Forum, 2025-01 • Covers the period 2025 to 2030.
- 2030
Maharashtra targets 400 new Global Capability Centres and 4 lakh high-skilled jobs, explicitly naming Nagpur as a target city
Projection Government of Maharashtra, 2025-11-03 • A stated government objective, not a forecast derived from data. Included because it is the only Nagpur-relevant forward-looking item with an official source.
Projections we chose not to repeat
- India will cross one million AI job openings by 2026. We could not trace this to any dated primary source, and it conflicts with the better-sourced 1.25 million by 2027 figure above, which suggests it is a mutated restatement.
- A 51% AI demand-supply gap. Traces to a 2022 baseline, and the primary report it is attributed to states no gap percentage at all.
- Demand for AI and big data specialists to grow over 60% in India. Plausible and widely repeated, but the publisher's site blocked access and we could not confirm the figure appears in the report.
07 • Methodology
What We Could Not Measure
Most published AI statistics pages show only what they found. This is what we looked for and could not source. It is here because a number's absence is information too, and because it is the part a journalist or a rival institute would check first.
Prompt Engineer salary in India
No survey-grade source exists. The only platform figure had a sample of 11 people, which is too small to publish. Figures circulating on training-company blogs have no stated methodology.
Power BI skill demand
No authoritative, dated, methodologically transparent source measures it. Live job-board listing counts are snapshots that include duplicates, not a demand index.
Deep Learning as a distinct skill
Not tracked separately by any major source. It is absorbed into wider AI and machine learning categories.
LangChain adoption rate
No independent survey measures it. Available figures are vendor marketing or GitHub stars, which measure popularity, not adoption.
MCP adoption rate
The count of published servers is citable. Every percentage adoption claim we found traced only to statistics-aggregator sites that contradicted each other.
Bolt adoption
No independent survey covers it. The best vendor claim is over a year old and counts signups, not active use.
India-specific figures for Python, SQL, Docker, AWS and Azure
Stack Overflow does not publish a per-country technology breakdown. We show its global figures and label them global.
A current measured AI demand-supply gap for India
The widely-quoted gap traces to a 2022 baseline. The primary 2024 report states no gap percentage at all. We do not repeat the number.
AI hiring data for Nagpur, Indore and Ahmedabad
The city-level AI listing data we could source covers seven metros and does not disaggregate these cities.
Healthcare and retail AI demand in India
The occupation and sector cuts we could source cover IT, BFSI, manufacturing, insurance and engineering only.
Widely-repeated claims we deliberately excluded
Each of these circulates freely. None survived a check against its supposed source.
- AI Engineer +143% year on year, applied to India. That is LinkedIn's United States figure. India per-title growth is not published.
- A 51% AI demand-supply gap. Traces to a 2022 baseline, and the primary report states no gap percentage.
- Only 16% of Indian IT professionals are AI-skilled. No dated primary document found.
- India will cross one million AI job openings by 2026. Untraceable, and conflicts with the better-sourced 2027 projection.
- Any composite popularity score for AI tools. No source publishes one, and the inputs are in incompatible units.
08 • Sources
Every Source, In Full
34 sources. Each figure on this page links back to one of them.
| Source | Date | Scope | Measured on | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ANSR Emerging Cities: India's Next Frontier for GCC Expansion 2026 | 2026-05-26 | india | GCC job openings and hiring across 14 emerging Indian cities. | Open |
| Alphabet Q2 2026 earnings, message from the CEO | 2026-07-22 | global | Company-announced figure. | Open |
| Andreessen Horowitz The Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps, 6th Edition | 2026-03-09 | global | Web ranking from Similarweb unique monthly visits; mobile from Sensor Tower MAU. January 2026 data. | Open |
| Aon Aon Survey Projects Slight Uptick in Salaries in India From 8.9 Percent in 2025 to 9.1 Percent in 2026 | 2026-02-24 | india | Over 1,400 organisations across 45 industries. | Open |
| CBRE AI job demand research, based on Naukri.com listings | 2026-02-19 | india | Over 64,500 active AI-tagged listings on Naukri.com as of December 2025. A point-in-time snapshot of open listings, not a full-year flow. | Open |
| Cognition Cognition's acquisition of Windsurf | 2025-07-14 | global | Announced at acquisition. | Open |
| Coursera Job Skills Report 2026 | 2026-01-21 | global | About 6 million professionally-motivated enterprise learners across 7,000+ institutional customers. Learners whose employer bought Coursera, not the general workforce. | Open |
| Deloitte India and NASSCOM Advancing India's AI Skills | 2024-08-20 | india | India AI talent pool estimates and projection to 2027. | Open |
| GitHub Octoverse 2025 | 2025-10-28 | global | Public and open-source activity on GitHub, 1 Sep 2024 to 31 Aug 2025. | Open |
| Government of India, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Office of the Development Commissioner MIHAN SEZ operational units register | undated | nagpur | Official register of operational units in the MIHAN Special Economic Zone, each listed with its Letter of Approval number and commencement date. | Open |
| Government of Maharashtra Maharashtra GCC Policy 2025 | 2025-11-03 | maharashtra | State policy targets. These are stated objectives, not measured outcomes. | Open |
| Indeed Hiring Lab September 2025 IN Labour Market Update: Continued Growth in AI | 2025-10-25 | india | Job postings on Indeed India. | Open |
| Indeed India Career salary pages, India | 2026-07 | india | Self-reported salaries and job-posting data. Sample size varies by role and is stated per figure. | Open |
| Indeed and NASSCOM India's AI Talent Inflection Point: From Skill Gaps to Competitive Advantage | 2026-05-22 | india | Job postings on Indeed India plus an employer and employee survey. The NASSCOM-hosted page was not machine-readable; figures come from CIO&Leader's reporting. | Open |
| Info Edge / Naukri JobSpeak monthly reports, city annexures | 2026-06 | india | Job listings posted on Naukri.com, by city. | Open |
| JetBrains The State of Developer Ecosystem 2025 | 2025-10 | global | 24,534 developers across 194 countries, fielded April to June 2025. | Open |
| LinkedIn Skills on the Rise 2026 (India) | 2026-02-24 | india | LinkedIn member skill-acquisition and hiring data in India. Published as a rank order only, with no growth percentages or denominators. | Open |
| LinkedIn India recruiter and job-seeker research | 2026-02 | india | LinkedIn survey of Indian recruiters and job seekers. | Open |
| LinkedIn News India Jobs on the Rise 2026: 25 fastest-growing jobs in India | 2026-01-08 | india | Analyses job starts by LinkedIn members in India, 1 Jan 2023 to 31 Jul 2025. Ranks growth rate, not volume. No per-title growth percentage is published for India. | Open |
| LinkedIn News India Jobs on the Rise 2025: 25 fastest-growing roles in India | 2025-01-15 | india | Analyses job starts by LinkedIn members in India, 1 Jan 2022 to 31 Jul 2024. Same methodology as the 2026 edition, one year earlier. | Open |
| Linux Foundation Linux Foundation Announces the Formation of the Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF) | 2025-12-09 | global | Foundation claim. Anthropic is a platinum member. | Open |
| NASSCOM Technology Sector in India: Strategic Review 2026 | 2026 | india | India technology sector aggregate employment and revenue estimates. | Open |
| Nagpur Today Fact check: MIHAN in numbers, do 90 companies really employ 1.27 lakh people in Nagpur? | 2026-03-05 | nagpur | Examines official MIHAN employment statements against unit-level reality. | Open |
| Naukri (Info Edge) JobSpeak Index | 2026-07-03 | india | Job listings posted on Naukri.com. Covers the formal white-collar segment that recruits via Naukri, not the whole Indian labour market. | Open |
| OpenAI ChatGPT weekly active users announcement | 2026-02-27 | global | Company-announced figure. Not independently audited. | Open |
| PayScale Salary research by job title, India | 2026-07 | india | Self-reported total compensation submitted by employees. Sample size varies by role and is stated per figure. | Open |
| Stack Overflow 2025 Developer Survey | 2025-07 | global | About 49,000 self-selected respondents across 177 countries. Not a random sample of developers. | Open |
| Stanford HAI AI Index Report 2026 | 2026-04-13 | india | AI skill-penetration metrics derived from LinkedIn member profiles, by country. | Open |
| TeamLease Digital Digital Skills & Salary Primer FY2025-26 | 2025-08 | india | Over 30,000 salaries analysed. | Open |
| TeamLease Digital Digital Skills & Salary Primer FY2024-25 (via PTI / ThePrint) | 2024-08-27 | india | Reached us through wire coverage rather than the primary PDF. | Open |
| TechCrunch Vibe-coding startup Lovable raises $330M at a $6.6B valuation | 2025-12-18 | global | Funding round. Valuation is not an adoption measure. | Open |
| World Economic Forum The Future of Jobs Report 2025 | 2025-01 | global | Over 1,000 employers representing more than 14 million workers, across 22 industry clusters and 55 economies. | Open |
| Zinnov and NASSCOM GCC Landscape in India 2026 (The GCC Value Orbit) | 2026-07-02 | india | Global Capability Centres in India, data as of March 2026 (FY2026). City breakdown from Zinnov's companion article, 15 June 2026. | Open |
| foundit (formerly Monster APAC & ME) foundit Insights Tracker, Annual Hiring Trends India 2025 | 2026-01-13 | india | AI-linked roles posted in India during calendar year 2025. A full-year flow of postings. | Open |
09 • Fireblaze Insights
Written Up, With the Same Sources
The data on this page also drives full articles on our blog, built from the same citations and the same rule: what we could not verify gets published as a gap, not a guess.
The AI Job Market in India in 2026: What the Data Actually Shows
The headline findings from this page, written up with the same sources and the same honesty about what we could not verify.
Read the article →Prompt Engineer Is India's Fastest-Growing Job Title, and Nobody Can Price It Yet
Why the number one fastest-growing job title on LinkedIn's 2026 India list still has no usable salary data, and what that gap actually tells you.
Read the article →How to Become an AI Engineer in India: Complete Roadmap 2026
The skill path behind the highest-ranked AI role that does have real, measured salary data.
Read the article →Career guidance
Work out what this means for you
Numbers describe a market. They do not tell you which program fits your degree, your city or your budget. That is a conversation, and ours is free with no obligation to enrol.
- An honest read on which roles suit your background
- What the pay data above realistically means for a fresher in Nagpur
- Which of our three programs fits, or whether none of them does
Corrections welcome
If a figure here is wrong, out of date, or you hold better data, tell us and we will fix it and say that we did.