Automation is now forcing India's largest technology services firms to tinker with what has been a universal constant: their employee structure.
Since the start of fiscal year 2026-27, seven of the country’s 10 largest information technology (IT) services firms have announced changes to their organizational structures, commonly referred to as the employee pyramid.
Traditionally, at the base of the pyramid are the junior-most employees with less than 7-10 years of experience, who constitute at least two-thirds of the total workforce. The middle tier comprises managers, who account for about a third of the headcount. At the apex is the leadership, which makes up about 5%, explained Sushovon Nayak, lead IT analyst at Anand Rathi Institutional Equities.
While Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp., Tech Mahindra Ltd, and Sonata Software Ltd are looking to broaden the base of the pyramid, Wipro Ltd, LTM Ltd, and Coforge Ltd are seeking to expand the middle. Tata Consultancy Services Ltd, the country’s largest IT player, meanwhile, is looking to reshape the employee structure based on skills rather than years of experience.
These differing approaches reflect changing talent needs as firms increasingly deploy engineers with sales and consulting skills to help clients modernize existing technology faster.
Changing Pyramid
The changing pyramid, however, could mean greater pressure for freshers to develop skills and become productive sooner, according to experts.
Keeping pace with automation
Cognizant's chief executive, S. Ravi Kumar, said the IT firm was hiring at the bottom while responding to a question about scaling the deployment of a frontier-certified workforce during its 29-July post-earnings analyst call.
“We are hiring at the bottom of the pyramid from outside, and we're doing it at scale, building bridges from inside,” he said. Nasdaq-listed Cognizant is an Indian-heritage IT firm, with roughly three-fourths of its workforce based in India.
“We are re-architecting our talent model into AI-augmented early career talent led by ‘player coaches’,” reiterated a Cognizant spokesperson in response to Mint's emailed queries.
Its smaller peer Tech Mahindra has taken a similar stance. “Now, as we see growth coming back, and if we see a lot of this growth coming back on fixed price, transformational programme where we can add freshers, we are very, very flexible in trying and improve the pyramid this year as well,” said its chief operating officer, Atul Soneja, during the company’s 22-April post-earnings analyst call.
“While fresher additions are expected to increase over the next few years, our priority remains in maintaining an optimal balance between fresh and experienced talent, creating a strong talent pyramid that supports innovation, growth, and long-term value creation,” said Richard Lobo, chief people officer of Tech Mahindra, in response to Mint's emailed queries.
On the other hand, Sonata Software’s management said during its 11-May analyst call that the company “benefited from pyramid management”.
Cognizant, which follows a January-December financial calendar as against Indian IT’s April-March, ended last year with $21.1 billion in revenue, up 7% from the year ago. Tech Mahindra and Sonata Software ended the last fiscal year with revenues of $6.39 billion and $1.21 billion, up 2% and 1% year-on-year, respectively.
Unlike these firms, which plan to hire juniors or cut back on mid-level staff, Wipro, LTM and Coforge plan to hire more middle-management staff, such as project consultants, or reduce their junior workforce to create a larger middle tier.
Wipro is looking at how many of the projects and programs can be run through agents and how many of the “current existing programs we can agentify," said CEO Srini Pallia on the company's strategy to improve profitability during its 16-July post-earnings analyst call.
LTM and Coforge were clear about strengthening their middle layer. “As we have called out in our strategy that the shape of the pyramid, etc., over a period of time will change from the traditional pyramid to a more diamond-shaped structure,” LTM's CEO Venu Lambu said during its 11-July post-earnings conference call.
“For Coforge, the demand tailwind is structural and pure. We were built for agility. We have no bloated delivery pyramid to manage,” Sudhir Singh, CEO of Coforge, said during the company’s 5-May post-earnings conference call.
Wipro ended the last fiscal with a 0.3% on-year revenue decline to $10.48 billion. LTM and Coforge grew 6% and 29% to $4.76 billion and $1.87 billion, respectively.
Meanwhile, TCS stands out with a different approach, moving towards a skill-centric employee pyramid, according to management commentary during its 9-July post-earnings analyst call.
The Mumbai-based company ended the last fiscal with $30.02 billion, down 0.5% on-year.
Mint's queries to the companies mentioned in the story remained unanswered, except for Cognizant and Tech Mahindra.
Impact on human intervention
The strategies point to two distinct approaches. “Some firms are moving towards a diamond by concentrating more talent in experienced engineering, architecture, domain and client-facing roles. Some are becoming more bottom-heavy because they believe AI-native graduates can become productive dramatically faster and at much lower cost than previous generations of freshers,” said Phil Fersht, CEO of Massachusetts-based IT research firm HFS Research.
A third analyst said this puts additional pressure on freshers to load up on as much knowledge as possible. However, they need time to do so.
“Seeing the pace at which AI (artificial intelligence) models are evolving, human intervention is reducing with new frontier model releases. Hallucinations are almost absent in AI-generated code, and if there are any hallucinations, experienced hands are needed to figure out where the fault is, rather than a fresher right out of college,” said Shubham Dalia, lead IT analyst at Nirmal Bang Institutional Equities.
“Either way, whether IT services firms hire AI-native freshers, or rely on more experienced middle-management employees, margins are likely to be under pressure as both cohorts would attract a premium,” Dalia added.
According to Nayak, the pyramid is most likely to get wider at the bottom. “The base of the pyramid is expected to broaden, benefiting from an improving mix of forward-deployed engineers, whereas the middle may resultantly shrink in the coming years."