Tech firms are hiring again and these are the hot skills they’re looking for

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26 Aug, 2025 12:21

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After all the uncertainty caused by US President Donald Trump and, more recently, by Covid, business is beginning to pick up for IT services companies. The clearest indication of this is the hiring spree that many of them are embarking on.

From client facing roles to new-gen technologies, tech firms are recruiting across the board to cater to the changing needs of clients as they see demand recover.

Here’s a look at the skills that are in demand right now, who’s hiring and how much these firms are willing to pay.

According to a report by specialised staffing firm Xpheno, IT/ITeS firms, including startups, were among the largest job creators in October.

The report, Hot Tech Jobs & Hot Skills @ COVID – Indian Unicorns & Soonicorns, revealed that there were over 1 lakh jobs on offer in October, the majority in tech.

The coming months will see more hiring as companies look to increase headcount in new-age technology areas. Take, for instance, Accenture. From over 3,000 openings at the beginning of October, Accenture now has over 7,000 vacancies across different cities in India.

IBM is now hiring for about 1,725 roles, from entry level to positions that require experience. A quick search for jobs openings in India at Wipro reveals that there are over 800 roles the company is currently looking to fill across different roles and categories.

Wipro CEO Thierry Delaporte in the recent analyst meet touched upon the need for talents in the new-generation technologies.

Here’s a look at the key roles companies are looking to fill. This list has been compiled based on the Xpheno report, openings listed by the major IT firms and leadership commentary.

A full-stack developer is someone who can handle both the frontend, which deals with user interface, and the backend, which involves storing and managing data. The skills required here include knowledge of programming languages such as (React.JS [Redux] and Angular.JS) for front-end and back-end such as Node.JS.

A full-stack developer can earn anywhere between Rs 4-6 lakh annually at the entry level and can earn up to Rs 40-80 lakh per annum with 12 years of experience, depending on the companies that hire them and the institutions they graduate from. For instance, engineers from India’s top institutes such as the Indian Institute of Technology are paid more than that of those graduating from a tier-3 college in India.

While data scientists help companies make sense of large amounts of data, this needs to be done in a format they can use. Here is where data engineers come in. They transform data into a structured format that data scientists can work on, making it an important role.

Data engineers need to know programming languages such as Python and R, and should know to work on data frameworks such as Hadoop.

A fresher can earn Rs 4-6 lakh annually and his could go up to Rs 14-15 lakh for three years of experience.  A data engineer with 12 years of experience could earn as much as Rs 70 lakh per annum.

This undoubtedly is one of the hottest skills right now as all companies are migrating to the cloud in the wake of Covid-19. During the company’s recently concluded analyst meet, Wipro CEO Delaporte pointed out that there is a huge focus on cloud and other new-age technologies that will drive growth for the firm.

There are hundreds of job openings across firms for cloud-related roles, including for architects, consultants and administrators of different cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services, Azure and Google cloud.

Salary surveys suggest that cloud professionals can earn anywhere from Rs 4 lakh per annum to Rs 35 lakh per annum as they gain experience and skills.

You can read an earlier Moneycontrol article here to learn about different certifications, where to get them and how much they cost.

Information security has never been as important as it is now with work from home becoming the norm and threats looming over security. For Indian IT service providers, cybersecurity, which was a key vertical even before Covid-19, is now an important focus and growth area.

All these are resulting in increasing demand for talent in this space and companies are willing to pay for it.

In an interaction with Moneycontrol last year, an Infosys executive said that the vertical is growing at the rate of 25-30 percent year-on-year and the company is stepping up its cybersecurity infrastructure. An ET article reported that Wipro expects cybersecurity services to account for about $1 billion by 2022.

Recent times have seen startups and top tech companies recruit top leaders in the cybersecurity space. This includes the appointment of Rinki Sethi as Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) by Twitter. Recently, India-based payment gateway firm PayU appointed Prakash Padariya as its CISO.

Given that these are very important skills, the salary for these professionals could be anywhere between Rs 4 lakh and Rs 4 crore annually.

For instance, a systems auditor — a role that requires basic skills such as maintaining firewalls, routers and virtual private networks — could get Rs 4 lakh per annum, while a CISO could get Rs 2-4 crore a year, states ed-tech platform Simplilearn blog.

You can read an earlier Moneycontrol article on how to kickstart your cybersecurity career here.