India's global capability centres (GCCs) are increasingly hiring AI and engineering talent through contract and project-based models, driven by rising demand for specialised skills and faster deployment, as companies move away from traditional workforce expansion towards flexible, outcome-focused teams.
Industry executives say the shift has become more pronounced, particularly across AI, cloud, cybersecurity, data engineering and product engineering roles.
"Over the last 18 months, GCCs have clearly moved toward more agile and blended workforce models, especially across AI, digital engineering and cloud transformation mandates," said Milind Shah, Managing Director – India, Randstad Digital.
While leadership and core capability roles continue to be filled through permanent hiring, demand for project-based specialists and niche engineering talent has increased as AI adoption accelerates and transformation timelines become shorter, he added.
According to Kapil Joshi, CEO of IT Staffing at Quess Corp, contractual talent now accounts for nearly 25% of the GCC workforce, up from around 18% two years ago, while close to 69% of GCC employers have adopted flexible staffing models.
"The biggest reason behind this shift is the growing demand for deployment-ready talent," Joshi said. "Today GCCs are largely prioritising professionals with 6+ years of hands-on expertise in niche and super-specialised areas such as GenAI, MLOps, LLM fine-tuning, cloud automation, FinOps, SRE, and cybersecurity."
The move towards flexible hiring is also changing how projects are delivered with clients increasingly seeking outcome-based project teams and specialist AI squads rather than traditional long-term staffing arrangements.
"Clients today are increasingly moving toward outcome-based project pods and specialist AI squads instead of traditional long-term staffing mandates," Joshi said.
He added that commercial models are evolving, with engagements no longer based only on headcount and resource hours but increasingly incorporating technology usage, AI platform costs, token consumption and outcome-linked delivery.
Similarly, Shah said GCCs are looking for smaller, multidisciplinary teams capable of solving specific business challenges, accelerating AI adoption within defined timelines rather than only scaling the workforce.
However, this is not slowing down AI based hiring. Neeti Sharma, CEO of TeamLease Digital, said "AI hiring is growing at about 60% YoY, driven by project-based pilots and transformation tracks that naturally suit flexible models," Sharma said.
Sharma added that GenAI and data engineering currently lead the transition to flexible staffing models. She said that more than 80% of GCCs are investing in GenAI and nearly 60% are investing in agentic AI, creating demand for deployment-ready expertise.
Fresher Hiring Pause
The growing use of AI is also influencing entry-level hiring.
Joshi said there has been a visible pause in fresher and junior-engineer hiring across many GCCs as AI tools improve productivity and reduce dependence on large execution-heavy teams.
According to Quess Corp, demand share for entry-level IT talent declined from nearly 28% in 2024 to almost 15% in 2025, while some GCCs have slowed or temporarily paused large campus hiring programmes.
At the same time, Sharma said GCCs are not eliminating roles but are becoming more selective in entry-level hiring.
"AI-assisted coding, automation, and copilots are reducing dependency on large junior engineering teams for repetitive work such as testing, maintenance, and basic development tasks," she said.
Sharma added that GCCs are projected to create four lakh fresher jobs by 2030, although these roles will be "AI-native, skills-assessed roles replacing legacy bulk intake entirely".