Demand for agentic AI skills surges; supply falls short by over 50%: Report

Agentic AI Jobs in India to Grow 35–40% Annually, Talent Gap Remains High: Report

Demand for Agentic AI and specialised Generative AI (GenAI) roles in India is expected to grow by 35–40 per cent annually, even as the demand-supply gap remains above 50 per cent, according to a report released on Friday.

Agentic AI refers to advanced artificial intelligence systems capable of autonomous decision-making and action. The report by Quess Corp, titled “Is India’s Workforce Ready for the Agentic AI Era?”, analysed more than 28,000 job postings and found that Agentic AI roles are now firmly part of enterprise hiring as companies move from GenAI pilots to production-ready autonomous workflows.

India’s Agentic AI market, valued at around USD 276 million in 2024, is projected to grow to nearly USD 3.5 billion by 2030, driven by automation modernisation and increased enterprise recall.

The report said salary premiums remain highest for senior architecture and AI safety roles, ranging between 20 per cent and 28 per cent. Around 30–35 per cent of advanced AI roles are expected to be filled through internal talent mobility, supported by structured AI training programmes across 70–75 per cent of Global Capability Centres (GCCs) and large enterprises. Remote roles are expected to account for 15–20 per cent of advanced AI hiring.

GCCs account for 54 per cent of total Agentic AI hiring demand, reflecting their focus on agent platform engineering, orchestration, safety and governance. Tech and SaaS companies show a 68 per cent adoption rate by embedding AI agents into products and customer workflows.

Mid- to senior-level professionals make up over 70 per cent of Agentic AI hiring, while early-career roles account for about 20 per cent. Leadership hiring continues to grow in areas such as governance, safety and product strategy.

The report also found that tool-calling and orchestration skills appear in 72 per cent of job descriptions, while Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG + Tool) capabilities are required in 63 per cent of roles. Exposure to frameworks such as LangGraph, AutoGen and CrewAI has reached 43 per cent, indicating a shift from prompt-based work to workflow-driven agent development.

New roles that were rare three years ago are now in demand, including AI Orchestration Engineers, Agent Behaviour Analysts, Agent Safety and Governance Specialists, Vector Database Architects, Agent Lifecycle Managers and Agentic AI Product Managers.

In terms of geography, Bengaluru and Hyderabad together account for nearly 62 per cent of Agentic AI hiring. NCR, Pune and Chennai continue to grow as hubs for governance and deployment, while Tier II cities such as Kochi, Coimbatore, Jaipur and Ahmedabad now contribute close to 10 per cent of total hiring.

Commenting on the findings, Quess Corp’s CEO of IT Staffing Kapil Joshi said Agentic AI represents a long-term career shift for Indian technology professionals, offering opportunities to take on greater responsibility, safety oversight and global technology ownership.