Indian IT hiring in Q2 FY27: the top 5 firms added 13,918 people

For two years the story about Indian IT services has been shrinking headcount and fewer fresher offers. The July to September quarter looks different on paper: four of the five biggest firms grew, and the five together added a net 13,918 people. That's not nothing. It's also not the whole story.

The quarter in numbers

Here's what each company reported for Q2 of FY27, using figures from People Matters and Business Today:

HCLTech+6,450

Tech Mahindra+5,446

Infosys+4,480

TCS+4,258

Wipro-6,716

HCLTech ended September at 230,339 people, Infosys at 332,542, TCS at 598,056 and Wipro at 236,328. For TCS it was the third quarter in a row of net additions since its restructuring in FY26. The total, adding up the reported figures, is a net gain of 13,918.

For context, one report says the same five firms had a combined net loss of 7,389 in FY26, after a net gain of 12,718 in FY25. So the trend has turned. Whether it's a recovery or a blip is something one quarter can't tell us. Wipro going the other way is a good reminder that it's uneven.

Net headcount isn't hiring

"Net" means hires minus exits, and the exits are large. TCS reported attrition of 13.3% and Wipro 13.8%. On a workforce of roughly 600,000, a 13% annual attrition rate means a company like TCS has to hire tens of thousands of people each year just to stand still. A net gain of 4,258 in a quarter therefore sits on top of a lot more hiring than the headline implies.

It also means that for a job seeker, the better question isn't whether the total went up, but who is being hired for what. Two things stand out:

• Freshers are still the main route in. Infosys said it brought in about 8,000 college graduates during the quarter and kept its target of 20,000 for FY27. Most of that happens through campus and structured programmes, not job postings.
• Direct postings ask for experience. Of the 1,614 new roles we classified last week, only 183 (11%) asked for one year or less. The middle was 891 roles (55%) asking for two to five years, and 540 (33%) asked for six or more. The typical role wants at least four years.

If you're a fresher, the numbers say to treat campus drives and off-campus programmes as your main channel and apply to direct postings as a bonus. If you have a few years behind you, the market is much friendlier than the headlines about "AI taking entry jobs" suggest, because mid-level is where most postings sit.

Where the openings actually are

Our week of data tells a different story from the big five. IBM was the single biggest poster, with 320 roles, but behind it the hiring was spread out: the other 1,294 roles came from 125 companies. The biggest of those were Mahindra Group (85 roles), Barclays (69), JPMorgan Chase (57), Microsoft (56), Tesla (52), GE Vernova (46), Honeywell (45), Bosch (43) and American Express (40).

Mostly that's global companies hiring for their India offices, plus a large Indian group. If your plan has been "get into a big IT services firm and move later", it's worth checking whether you can go to some of these directly.

What are the skills in demand? IBM's list is a decent example of what services work looks like right now. Of its 320 roles, at least 91 had "Cloud FullStack" in the title (application developers and applied AI specialists), 37 were data engineers on Databricks, Snowflake or Google platforms, and the rest included package consultants for SAP, ServiceNow and Workday. Cloud, data platforms and enterprise packages keep turning up.

What we'd do with this

1. Look at the whole market, not the biggest names. 125 companies posted the non-IBM roles. The long tail is where most of your options are.
2. If you have two to five years of experience, you're in the biggest group. More than half of last week's roles asked for exactly that.
3. Pick a platform and go deep. Data platform and cloud roles show up again and again. "Databricks" or "Snowflake" next to a real project beats a generic "data engineering" line.
4. Don't read one quarter as a trend. Check again after the October to December results.

How we counted: the role figures come from jobs posted on Jobsman between 29 October and 4 November 2026, grouped by title and the experience each posting asks for. Headcount figures are as reported by the companies and the outlets linked above.