Cognizant to hire 20,000 freshers in 2025, to shape pyramid for AI-led delivery

Cognizant

Information technology (IT) services firm Cognizant is planning to onboard 20,000 freshers in 2025, aiming to expand its talent pyramid to prepare for managed services and artificial intelligence (AI)-led software development.

“The 20,000 freshers will now shape our pyramid because we are now getting a lot of managed services work. So, that will start to accelerate our headcount,” said Chief Executive Officer Ravi Kumar S during a press conference after March quarter results. “Now that organic growth has come back, it’s a good time to re-baseline the pyramid,” Kumar added.

A pyramid structure in IT usually refers to having a larger number of employees with less experience and fewer employees with more experience, resulting in reduced salary bills.

During Q1CY25, the US-based IT services firm beat the Street revenue estimates on the back of large deals in health sciences and financial services verticals.

The fresher recruitment announcement comes at a time when Cognizant’s Indian peers have stopped short of sharing the exact hiring targets for FY26, citing uncertainty in the demand environment.

Nevertheless, the top five IT companies will add anywhere between 80,000-84,000 IT jobs during the current fiscal, as per management commentary so far. The actual figure can vary widely, as pointed out by company executives.

The new recruits will be trained on FlowSource, Cognizant’s internal developer tool that combines human and machine-generated code. “When you’re doing it for the first time and doing it that way, that’s the only way you’ll know how to code,” Ravi said, referring to the AI-first approach being introduced at the fresher level. The use of code assist platforms from day one is expected to drive productivity gains across the development cycle.

Cognizant is also continuing its specialised hiring from Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs) for its power programmers and full-stack developer roles.

The company, like its peers, is trying to anticipate how far AI will reshape delivery structures. “Will the pyramid be a pyramid, will it become a diamond, or will it become a cylinder? It all depends on how AI progresses,” he said.

The Belcan-headquartered firm is also exploring the creation of new roles as part of what it describes as ‘Vector 3 of agentification’, referring to next-gen service models that may not require traditional engineering skills. “These are labour pools we didn’t address in the past,” the chief executive said, highlighting new opportunities for non-engineers with expertise in operations, domain knowledge, etc.

Ravi revealed that the services major has about 60,000 employees who have spent over 10 years with the company, joining right from college. “And that's the core of the company, that's the middle management of the company.”

Doubling down on GCCs

Kumar said Cognizant’s deep domain expertise across industries sets it apart in the Global Capability Centre (GCC) space, with talent depth in both India and the United States.

The company has 6 GCC deals as of now, and over 20 deals are in the pipeline.

“We have identified Global Capability Centres as one of five focus areas to sustain our growth momentum. We are expanding our large deal momentum to focus on mega deals and capitalise on GCCs,” Kumar said.

Cognizant is also engaging with GCCs through long-term, high-value contracts that go beyond setup and transition. Depending on client maturity, the company either provides microservices around the GCC or builds, operates, and transfers (BOT) full capabilities.

This includes perpetual services for AI and productivity tooling, which Cognizant sees as core to its offering. The Kumar-led company is betting on this model as a sticky, annuity-plus-perpetual revenue stream, especially as engineering, a segment with historically low outsourcing, opens up.

One such key GCC is located at Cognizant’s Hyderabad campus for Citizens Financial Group.