Defence, aerospace firms have designs on niche engineers from IITs, competing with Big Tech

These engineers are required for advanced manufacturing and product design projects in private companies based in India, which are seeking billion-dollar business opportunities.

“With the rise of space-tech startups—not just rocket makers like Skyroot, but also many promising satellite makers and space-intelligence-based startups in Hyderabad, Bengaluru and elsewhere—for the first time, India's top-tier candidates have a reliable and promising career opportunity to partake in truly world-class engineering right from India," Temasek-backed Skyroot Aerospace said in an email response to Mint.

Founded in Hyderabad by Pawan Kumar Chandana and Naga Bharath Daka, who were once colleagues at the Indian Space Research Organisation, Skyroot Aerospace is India’s highest-funded space startup with $95 million in venture capital funding to date. It is set to make its first commercial rocket launch from Indian soil by March 2026. Chandana and Daka are alumni of IIT Kharagpur and IIT Madras, respectively.

The company said this year Skyroot held its first “structured" recruitment drive across 20 top-tier institutes in India—including the IITs, the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology, and the Indian Institute of Science. From 3,500 applicants, about 65 students were offered a job.

The enthusiasm among aerospace and defence companies to recruit engineers from India's top engineering colleges reflects the growing opportunity for such firms, as the government promotes local manufacturing across critical sectors.

India's bustling defence sector will tussle with high-frequency trading companies that offer some of the highest compensation packages, alongside Big Tech giants with global postings, and even the established manufacturing and banking companies.

On campus

Older IITs, including Bombay, Delhi, Madras, Kharagpur and Kanpur, started their campus placements on 1 December, while recruitments at the new ones began a couple of months ago.

According to placement teams across IITs, participating companies include Bengaluru-based startup Nabhdrishti Aerospace and Zomato founder Deepinder Goyal-backed LAT Aerospace. Such young firms are competing against the defence divisions of large conglomerates such as GE Aerospace, L&T Precision Engineering & Systems, GKN Aerospace and Tata Advanced Systems.

L&T Precision Engineering & Systems (L&T PES) runs the engineering conglomerate’s defence and aerospace businesses.“While L&T recruits over 3,000 engineers annually from premier institutions such as IITs and NITs, we plan to hire approximately 175 engineers for PES IC across specialised domains, aligned with business and project requirements," said C. Jayakumar, chief human resources officer at Larsen & Toubro Ltd.

L&T offers competitive, market-aligned remuneration for fresher hires, with compensation varying by institute, role, and trainee category, and benchmarked against industry standards for defence and aerospace engineering roles, he said.

“In alignment with L&T’s strategic thrust on defence & aerospace, precision engineering systems, and emerging businesses such as industrial electronics and precision products, we propose to recruit fresh engineering talent from premier IITs and NITs during the current year. The recruitment will focus on niche, high-impact domains including embedded systems, power electronics, signal processing, machine learning, artificial intelligence, machine design, radar technologies, and industrial design, primarily to support R&D and advanced engineering roles," Jayakumar said.

On 20 November, Mint reported that an increased privatization push is helping India’s top conglomerates seek billion-dollar revenue opportunities in defence and space. After public sector duo Hindustan Aeronautics and Bharat Electronics, private firms Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders, L&T PES and Tata Advanced Systems were the top three companies pursuing large defence contracts in India under the aegis of the Centre’s 2025 Defence Procurement Manual.

Queries emailed to HAL, BEL, MDS, and TAS remained unanswered until press time. Nabhdrishti Aerospace, GE Aerospace, and LAT Aerospace, as well as IITs of Bombay, Delhi, Madras, Kanpur, and Kharagpur, did not respond to queries.

Prolonged affair

“Space is a slow-burn industry, where revenue generation is a prolonged affair and is hinged more upon technological progress—even though geopolitics is catching up fast," said Chaitanya Giri, space and geopolitics fellow at the Observer Research Foundation. “The private defence space, however, is scaling early, driven by the spate of geopolitical conflicts today. With specialized prototype development a key part of how companies can differentiate themselves, companies are likely to start hiring heavily for this."

Small companies, too, are in the fray. Amit Mahajan, director at publicly listed defence contractor Paras Defence, said the company partners with top engineering institutes, incubates early-stage defence ideas, and then absorbs them into the organization.

"This year, we’re partnering with Techfest at IIT Bombay, and also seeking talent from NIT Warangal. We’re offering skilling of the right technologies in the formative years, which works for us too as the level of skill in Indian engineers deployable in a defence company has improved over the past 10 years," he said.

Companies are looking for niche skills, including an understanding of artificial intelligence (AI) in manufacturing.

“Core strengths, such as aerospace fundamentals, structures, materials, avionics, systems engineering, manufacturing and related operations, safety and quality, and programming for engineering applications, remain central. Digital competencies like data analytics, model‑based systems engineering, simulation, and applied AI increasingly complement those foundations," said GKN Aerospace, a UK supplier of airframes, engine structures and landing gear.

The company, which supplies products and services to commercial and military aircraft and engine prime contractors, sees a “sustained long‑term demand for skilled engineers".

This need is “driven by production ramp-up of aircraft and aero-engines, electrification, the transition to more sustainable aviation and digital transformation in engineering and manufacturing."