AI lets us work more naturally, not like machines: LinkedIn engineering chief Mohak Shroff

Mohak Shroff, Senior Vice President, Head of Engineering, LinkedIn

• AI tools at LinkedIn help employees focus on higher value work
• Agency is key in the AI era, enabling independent problem-solving
• India is LinkedIn's fastest growing market with 170 million users

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An artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted work environment lets us work the way we naturally enjoy, rather than requiring us to work like machines, LinkedIn's global engineering head Mohak Shroff told Moneycontrol, referring to the rapid proliferation of generative AI tools in the workplace.

"We can converse, use natural language, talk, type, view, and interact with these tools to get rid of some of the boring bits of the job," he said.

Shroff explained that what had happened with technology over the years is that, in many ways, we had made people work more like machines. "We told them they had to read code, even though it does not feel natural. We asked them to use tools that are weird and don't feel natural either," he said.

Now, he said, AI tools and agents can take on some of that mechanical work.

"If I have an AI agent that can do that understanding for me and then explain it to me, and I can question and answer with it, that is a much more natural way for me to work," Shroff added.

According to Shroff, the shift is already visible at LinkedIn across functions such as HR, marketing, finance, engineering, product management, and design. Employees are using AI tools to eliminate repetitive or tedious tasks and focus instead on higher value work.

"What is of higher value is ensuring quality ... I spend more time on taste and judgment, which is knowing what to do and why to do it," he said. "Rather than focusing on which tool to use, we focus internally on highlighting taste and empowering agency. We give everyone access to the available tools and let them decide which works best for them."

"It's a long journey, but we're on the journey," he said.

Shroff, who currently serves as Senior Vice President of Engineering at LinkedIn, leads the company’s global engineering teams, responsible for building, scaling, and protecting LinkedIn’s platform, which has over 1.3 billion members.

What is the most important skill in the AI environment?

Shroff said the most important skill of the new AI era is agency, which he described as recognising the ability to solve a problem independently and taking ownership of it. He added that Indian entrepreneurs, perhaps more than anywhere else in the world, demonstrate extraordinary levels of it in the age of AI.

"In this age of AI, the barrier to innovation has been massively lowered. Anyone can innovate. The tools now exist to build almost anything one can imagine. The real skill, therefore, is to become extraordinarily high agency and start to imagine how they want to solve the problem," he said.

Why is India important for LinkedIn?

India is LinkedIn's second largest market with 170 million users. It is also the fastest growing market for the Microsoft-owned professional networking platform, registering a 20 percent growth year-on-year. Revenue from LinkedIn India has more than doubled since 2020.

The country is also home to the company’s largest research and development (R&D) centre outside the United States, located in Bengaluru.

LinkedIn India Country Manager Kumaresh Pattabiraman said the company has recently moved its Sales Solutions (LSS) business, one of its largest revenue drivers, to India, with end-to-end R&D now being run from the country. This includes product management, design, engineering, and data science functions.

Pattabiraman, who also serves as vice-president of the LSS product at LinkedIn, added that the business holds a 33 percent market share in the sales intelligence space, with 1.5 million sellers using the product.

How is LinkedIn integrating generative AI to its platform?

LinkedIn's early efforts in generative AI and agents reflect in features such as Hiring Assistant, AI-powered Job Search, and smarter recommendations.

Hiring Assistant is LinkedIn's first agentic offering for recruiters to help streamline the hiring process. It helps them draft job descriptions, search and evaluate profiles across the platform to surface top candidates along with their relevant skills and experience, write personalised outreach messages, and conduct initial candidate pre-screening.

It was first introduced in October 2024 and was made globally available in English language in September 2025.

Meanwhile, the AI-powered Job Search feature enables members to discover relevant jobs using natural language queries.

Pattabiraman cited the example of a candidate who typed into the search box, “Help me find internships where I can apply my machine learning skills and my interest in music as a trained musician.” The first result the candidate received was for an audio engineer intern role at Dolby Research in Bengaluru.

The AI-powered People Search feature also helps professionals identify and connect with relevant peers, hiring managers and industry experts more effectively.

LinkedIn also recommends upskilling courses through its Learning Solutions offering in a personalised way by charting career paths of similar professionals and experience levels across the world.