Cognizant plans to hire about 25,000 freshers in 2026 as AI boosts productivity

Cognizant's revenue per employee rose about 5% over the trailing twelve months, while margin per employee increased about 8%.

• Cognizant to hire 24,000-25,000 fresh graduates in 2026, up 20% from 2025
• AI-led delivery models boost productivity, supporting higher fresher intake
• Revenue per employee rose 5%, margin per employee up 8% over past year

Did our AI summary help?

IT major Cognizant Technology Solutions plans to hire about 24,000 to 25,000 fresh graduates in 2026, pacing up campus recruitment as artificial intelligence-led delivery models improve productivity at the entry level.

The planned intake represents an increase of about 20 percent over 2025, when Cognizant hired close to 20,000 freshers. Of those, around 16,000 are already deployed on client work, while about 4,000 are currently undergoing training.

“We hired close to 20,000 school graduates in 2025… For next year we plan to increase this by about 20%. So we, we would be very happy to land around 240000-25000 for 2026,” CFO Jatin Dalal said while addressing a press conference after declaring the latest quarterly results.

Contrary to the widespread discussion on AI-led job losses, the management said that higher fresher intake is being supported by rising productivity at the bottom of the pyramid, enabled by greater use of AI tools, agentic software, and automation in delivery.

“So our thesis is as we continue on our partnerships with Anthropic, Gemini, OpenAI, Microsoft, and all the AI platforms, you will notice that the value can be drifted to the bottom, distributed, and we can have a broader pyramid,” Chief Executive Officer Ravi Kumar said in the conference.

Meanwhile, revenue per employee rose about 5 percent over the trailing twelve months, while margin per employee increased about 8 percent, which indicates growing non-linearity between headcount addition and revenue growth.

Cognizant added about 14,800 employees overall in 2025, expanding its workforce by roughly 4 percent, even as revenue grew faster at 6.4 percent in constant currency terms. For the December quarter, the company added 1,800 employees.

The company said this reflected a shift toward a broader talent pyramid, with a greater share of early-career hires supported by AI-assisted delivery.

The company has been expanding partnerships across large language models (LLMs), cloud platforms, and autonomous software engineering tools, allowing fresher engineers to contribute to client projects faster and at higher throughput than earlier delivery models.

Cognizant said it continues to hire fresh graduates across geographies, including India and the US, as part of its strategy to embed AI capabilities early in careers and scale delivery through a combination of human and digital labour.

Meanwhile, the Teaneck-headquartered IT services firm beat its fourth-quarter revenue guidance, offering early evidence that its billion-dollar AI push is beginning to translate into growth, even as client spending remains measured and sequential visibility stays cautious.

The IT services giant reported fourth-quarter revenue of $5.3 billion, up 4.9 percent year-on-year, or 3.8 percent in constant currency, while full-year revenue rose 7 percent to $21.1 billion. Operating margin for the year expanded 140 basis points to 16.1 percent.