Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping how employees work inside India’s IT services companies, forcing engineers to adopt new tools, retrain in AI skills and adjust to rising productivity expectations, even as company leaders say the shift is creating more transformation than immediate job losses.
“AI has clearly changed how we work. Earlier, we would spend days writing and testing basic code. Now, tools can generate a first version in hours. It saves time, but it also means clients expect faster delivery and sometimes lower costs,” said Ram Prasad, a mid-level software engineer at a Bengaluru-based IT firm.
He said the change is altering the nature of work rather than eliminating it outright. “So we have to add value in other ways, like understanding the business problem better or improving system design. I don’t think jobs will disappear overnight, but the nature of our roles is definitely changing.”
Across large IT firms, AI adoption is no longer optional. “Inside the company, there is strong encouragement to use AI in every project. Training programmes and certifications are becoming common,” said a project lead at a top Indian IT firm, who did not want to be named.
“At the same time, people are quietly worried about what this means in the long term. If AI can handle routine tasks like testing or monitoring, fewer junior roles may be required. For now, it feels more like a shift in skills rather than job losses, but everyone knows we have to keep adapting to stay relevant,” she added.
Shilpi Chopra, a Noida-based IT professional, said both companies and clients are now encouraging the use of large language models (LLMs) in projects. According to her, LLMs help generate baseline code — with nearly 50% of the work being handled by these tools — after which engineers build and refine the rest.
Earlier, Chopra said, clients and companies often restricted the use of LLMs such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Alibaba Cloud’s Qwen, Anthropic’s Claude, and Meta’s Llama. Now, however, their use is actively encouraged.
Chopra, who worked at Tata Consultancy Services until last year, said companies have made it mandatory for employees to complete AI courses and obtain certifications. Even fresh recruits are now trained in AI. However, she dismissed concerns that AI poses a large-scale threat to IT jobs.
At the organisational level, executives say artificial intelligence is changing how services are delivered, particularly in cloud operations.
TCS wants employees to proactively use artificial intelligence (AI) even if it means “cannibalising revenue streams”, CEO K Krithivasan said at the Nasscom Technology and Leadership Forum in Mumbai.
"We are telling associates that if you find that you can do something faster, better, cheaper with AI, you should probably go and tell your customers, even if it cannibalises revenue," Krithivasan said.
Enterprises are moving towards what is described as a ‘human by exception’ model, where AI systems handle routine monitoring and fixes, while people intervene only when decisions carry significant risk, Anant Adya, EVP and Service Offering Head at Infosys, told TNIE.
“The level of criticality and potential impact of a decision determines whether human judgment must remain involved,” Adya said. “When a decision affects business-critical systems, security posture or data integrity, or has a large or irreversible impact, humans must stay in the loop.”
AI agents are designed to analyse large volumes of operational data and act on it automatically. “They make operational decisions and execute in high-volume situations like proactive monitoring (lead indicator identification), fleet management, backup assurance, incident triaging, recovery handling, and change analysis,” Adya said, adding that this boosts system availability, provides operators with vital insights, and reduces fatigue, all without elevating enterprise risk.
While employees adapt to new tools, company leaders acknowledge that AI-driven productivity is putting pressure on traditional billing models.
Artificial intelligence is beginning to compress parts of the traditional IT services model, even as it opens up new growth areas, Infosys CEO Salil Parekh said at the company’s AI summit. “We see that (pressure) is visible, but it's not large, and it's not insignificant. But we don't see an acceleration of that either at this stage,” Parekh said.
Pricing structures are also evolving as AI becomes embedded in delivery. “If you're able to have a larger part of revenue enabled through platforms or agents, it will create, to that extent, a non-linearity,” said Jayesh Sanghrajka, CFO of Infosys. “You have various examples of outcome-based pricing. You have examples of pricing, which is a combination of outcome-based pricing plus an agent pricing or a platform pricing.”
For employees, the transition means adapting to AI-driven workflows and higher expectations. For companies, it involves balancing productivity gains with the need to protect revenue and margins.