2026 Data Report

The State of IT Jobs & Salaries in India

We analysed 23,704 live technology & IT jobs across 993 companies hiring in India — here's what the data says about where the roles are, and what they pay.

23,704live tech jobs
993companies hiring
8+major cities
19%remote roles
6.5%AI & ML roles

India's technology job market in 2026 is bigger, more distributed, and more polarised than it has ever been. To cut through the anecdotes, HireHire analysed every one of the 23,704 live tech & IT roles currently on our platform — across 993 companies — alongside crowdsourced compensation data for hundreds of employers. This report is what the numbers say: what roles actually pay, which cities and companies are hiring hardest, and what it all means if you're planning your next move.

In this report

  1. What tech roles pay in India
  2. The highest-paying employers
  3. Where the jobs are
  4. Which functions are hiring
  5. Who's hiring the most
  6. What it means for job seekers
  7. Frequently asked questions

💰 What tech roles pay in India

Compensation is the first question on every job seeker's mind, so we'll start there. The chart below shows the median annual CTC for the ten most common tech roles in India, aggregated from hundreds of companies' employee-reported salary data.

Engineering Manager
₹65.1L
Senior Software Engineer
₹33.2L
Product Manager
₹30.3L
Data Scientist
₹26.2L
Data Engineer
₹23.4L
Software Engineer
₹19.1L
DevOps / SRE
₹16.3L
UI/UX Designer
₹13.0L
Data Analyst
₹11.6L
QA / Test Engineer
₹9.1L
💡 A Software Engineer in India earns a median ₹19.1L, rising to ₹33.2L at senior level and ₹65.1L for Engineering Managers. Data & Product roles command a strong premium over QA and analytics.

The headline is the steepness of the curve. A software engineer's median roughly jumps 74% by senior level and more than triples into engineering management — one of the widest individual-contributor-to-manager spreads of any major market. The second signal is the premium on data and product skills: Data Scientists (₹26.2L) and Product Managers (₹30.3L) out-earn generalist engineers, while QA and analytics roles anchor the bottom near ₹9.1L. For anyone early in their career, the data makes a clear argument: specialise toward data/AI or move into product.

🏆 The highest-paying employers

Top pay clusters around product companies, global capability centres and fintech firms rather than IT-services giants. Morgan Stanley leads at an average ₹95L for its best-paid role, followed by Uber and Atlassian.

Morgan Stanley
₹95L
Uber
₹73L
Atlassian
₹71L
Adobe
₹65L
Microsoft
₹63L
Linkedin Technology Information Pvt Ltd
₹62L
Rippling
₹62L
Google
₹59L
ServiceNow
₹52L
Fractal Analytics
₹50L

Note what's missing from this list: the companies hiring the most people (further down) are largely not the ones paying the most. That gap — volume at the services firms, top-of-market pay at product and finance companies — is the defining tension of India's tech job market, and it should shape where you aim depending on whether you're optimising for pay or for opportunity.

📍 Where the jobs are

Tech hiring in India remains heavily concentrated. A handful of metros dominate, with the top three cities accounting for roughly 49% of all live roles.

Bengaluru
7,157
Hyderabad
2,229
Delhi NCR
2,193
Pune
1,690
Mumbai
1,687
Chennai
1,450
Kolkata
231
Kochi
87
Bengaluru alone accounts for 30% of all live tech roles — more than the next two cities combined. Hyderabad and Delhi NCR round out the top three.

For job seekers this cuts both ways. The deepest markets — and the fiercest competition — are in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi NCR, while emerging hubs like Pune, Mumbai, Chennai offer less competition and a lower cost of living. Browse openings city by city, starting with tech jobs in Bengaluru or the full IT jobs in India hub.

🧑‍💻 Which functions are hiring

Engineering is, unsurprisingly, the engine of tech hiring — but the mix around it tells you where the market is heading.

Engineering
8,396
Sales & CS
1,414
Marketing
895
Data & AI
792
Product
732
Design
399
QA
49
🤖 6.5% of all live tech openings — about 1 in 15 — are AI, ML or data-science roles by title, making artificial intelligence the fastest-emerging skill demand in India’s 2026 tech market.

Engineering is the largest category at 35% of openings, but Data & AI is the fastest-growing specialism and carries the salary premium we saw earlier. Sales & customer-success roles rank second overall — a useful reminder that a "tech job" isn't only writing code. Jump into engineering, data & AI or product roles across India.

🔥 Who's hiring the most

Finally, sheer volume — the companies with the most live openings on HireHire right now.

TCS
4,081
HCL Tech
1,697
Accenture
1,404
Birlasoft
557
Google
463
OpenAI
369
Zensar
367
NTT Data
353
Amazon Music
341
JPMorgan Chase
334
Infosys
297
Amazon
292

The leaderboard is topped by India's IT-services majors — TCS, HCL Tech, Accenture — each with hundreds to thousands of open roles, alongside global product companies like Google, OpenAI, Amazon Music. High volume makes these the best places to start a broad search; you can explore any of them in the companies directory.

📌 What it means for job seekers in 2026

1. Specialise toward data, AI and product. The salary curve rewards it — these roles out-earn generalist engineering and are growing fastest.

2. Use location as leverage. Bengaluru has the most roles but also the most competition; emerging hubs and the 19% of roles that are remote widen your options considerably.

3. Separate pay from volume. The companies hiring the most aren't the ones paying the most. Target product and fintech firms for compensation, services firms for opportunity and speed of hiring.

4. Negotiate with data. Walk into every conversation knowing the median band for your role and level from the chart above — it's the single cheapest raise you can give yourself.

Ready to act on it? Browse 23,704 live IT jobs in India, or explore them visually on the HireHire job map.

Frequently asked questions

What is the average IT salary in India in 2026?

Based on crowdsourced data across hundreds of companies, the median annual CTC for a Software Engineer in India is around ₹19.1L, rising to about ₹33.2L at senior level and ₹65.1L for Engineering Managers. Data Scientists (₹26.2L) and Product Managers (₹30.3L) command a premium over generalist and QA roles.

Which Indian city has the most IT jobs?

Bengaluru leads by a wide margin with 7,157 live tech roles — roughly 30% of all openings. Together, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Delhi NCR account for about 49% of India's tech jobs.

Which company pays tech employees the most in India?

Among employers with enough reported data, Morgan Stanley tops the list at an average ₹95L for its best-paid role, ahead of firms like Uber and Atlassian. The highest pay clusters around product companies, global capability centres and fintech — not the largest-volume services firms.

What percentage of IT jobs in India are remote?

About 19% of the live tech roles on HireHire are remote or work-from-home. The majority are still on-site or hybrid, concentrated in the major metros.

Which company has the most job openings right now?

TCS currently has the most live openings, followed by HCL Tech and Accenture. India's IT-services majors dominate hiring volume, while global product companies lead on pay.

What is the highest-paying tech role in India?

Among common roles, Engineering Manager is the highest-paid at a median of about ₹65.1L, followed by Senior Software Engineer (₹33.2L). Specialising toward data, AI or product leadership is the clearest path to top-of-market pay.

See it all on one map

Every one of these 23,704 jobs — plotted across India by city, filterable by role, with real salary bands and company ratings.

Explore the HireHire job map →
Methodology. Figures are computed from 23,704 live technology & IT job listings aggregated on HireHire (updated every 8 hours), across 993 companies hiring in India. Only roles posted within the last 90 days are counted. Salary figures are median annual CTC estimates from crowdsourced employee-reported data (AmbitionBox) and are indicative, not guarantees. Last updated: August 2026.
Key findings — free to cite with a link to HireHire:
  • 23,704 live tech & IT jobs across 993 companies hiring in India.
  • Bengaluru holds 30% of all openings; the top three cities together hold 49%.
  • Only 19% of tech roles are remote or work-from-home.
  • 6.5% of openings (about 1 in 15) are AI, ML or data-science roles by title.
  • The biggest hirers are TCS, HCL Tech, Accenture.
Cite as: "The State of IT Jobs & Salaries in India — 2026", HireHire, https://hirehire.in/state-of-it-jobs-india-2026.html. Press & data requests via hirehire.in/contact.