Data centre hiring outgrows software roles in India

Data centre-related job postings accounted for 1.3% of all Indeed India postings in August 2026, up from 1% a year earlier and nearly double the share two years ago, per Indeed Hiring Lab. The composition is the real story: software development is only 28% of these roles, while management (9.9%), industrial engineering (5.8%), sales (5.2%), electrical engineering (3.6%) and project management (3.5%) make up much of the rest. This is happening while core tech hiring cools — IT infrastructure, operations and support postings fell 20% and software development fell 19% over three months. KPMG pegs India's data centre opportunity at $90 billion by 2035. Key signal: Data centre roles hit 1.3% of all Indeed India postings in August 2026, up from 1% a year earlier, while IT infrastructure postings fell 20% and software development fell 19% over the past three months. For hiring leaders, this matters because for TA leaders, this is a sourcing problem disguised as a tech story. The fastest-growing slice of AI infrastructure hiring is not software engineers — it is electrical engineers, industrial engineers, project managers and facility operations talent that most tech recruiters have never sourced. Meanwhile, your traditional IT infrastructure and software pipelines are contracting. That means competing for talent against L&T, Tata Projects, Schneider, Vertiv and hyperscaler facility teams, not just other IT firms. Compensation benchmarks, notice periods and assessment frameworks built for software hiring will not work here. GCCs and data centre operators that build dedicated non-software talent tracks now will have a structural advantage over those still fishing in the same engineering pool. Teksands view: The AI infrastructure boom is creating a hiring category most tech recruiters are not equipped for. Electrical engineers, industrial engineers and facility project managers are now the scarce talent, not full-stack developers. TA teams at GCCs and data centre operators should build separate sourcing tracks, compensation bands and assessment frameworks for infrastructure roles — because the software playbook will not find these people, and the usual competitors are construction and energy firms, not IT services.