A new LinkedIn report reveals that 93% of Indian chief technology officers are increasingly focused on helping organisations adapt to future ways of working, with their roles being actively redefined in real time. According to the report, 79% of CTOs said their remit now includes tasks that were not part of it a year earlier, while 84% felt their role is being actively redefined in real time. As Malai Lakshmanan, Head of India Engineering at LinkedIn, noted, "With over 9 in 10 Indian CTOs acknowledging that their role has shifted toward helping organisations adapt to the future of work, technology leadership today extends far beyond managing systems and infrastructure." The report emphasizes that success depends as much on people as it does on technology, with employees needing the skills and confidence to make AI part of their daily work.
The workforce transformation is reflected in emerging job roles, with 'prompt engineer' and 'AI engineer' identified as the fastest-growing roles in India. As reported by LinkedIn, the organisations that create the most value from AI will be those that invest as heavily in workforce readiness and continuous learning as they do in technology. The report highlights that 81% of CTOs face pressure to move faster on AI than they can effectively measure its impact, while 56% mentioned balancing long-term AI transformation with short-term performance demands as a major leadership challenge. This accelerated pace of AI adoption is fundamentally reshaping how companies approach workforce planning and development.
The IT sector's transformation requires comprehensive workforce reskilling initiatives across multiple skill areas, with 51% of CTOs viewing stronger CTO-CHRO partnerships as the single most critical factor in building an effective AI-enabled workforce. According to LinkedIn's analysis, 89% of CTOs reported working closely with their CHROs to navigate these challenges. As reported by Axis Bank Chief Economist Neelkanth Mishra, companies are likely to hire more talent in areas such as design, user interface (UI), user experience (UX) and deployment, while demand for routine coding work may decline. The key challenge remains managing this transition effectively, with Mishra noting that "there is significant risk going forward and there is a significant amount of transition that all of these IT services companies need to go through in terms of reskilling of people."
Despite AI disruptions, India's services exports continue to demonstrate robust growth momentum. According to Mishra's analysis, services export growth reached 15% in dollar terms during April, significantly outpacing the country's GDP growth rate. As reported by ANI, this performance indicates that services exports are growing faster than GDP, suggesting the sector's resilience against technological transitions. The strong export performance occurs even as AI advances are fundamentally altering the industry's operational structure and service delivery models, with the report confirming that AI is changing the structure of the IT industry, with some work shifting from outsourced service providers to in-house teams.
Looking ahead, Mishra expects India's economic momentum to recover following recent slowdowns, particularly benefiting from declining energy prices. According to his analysis reported by ANI, lower energy prices are expected to support a recovery in India's growth momentum after a temporary slowdown. Mishra projected that the growth momentum seen in February should revive within one to two months, noting that India was growing at 7.5-8% in February and there's no reason why that shouldn't revive in the next two years. This optimistic outlook reflects confidence in the country's ability to navigate both technological transitions and broader economic challenges effectively, with the LinkedIn report reinforcing that AI adoption moves from experimentation to scale, success depends as much on people as it does on technology.
