Tata Consultancy Services is building a team of up to 8,900 forward-deployed engineers while hunting for AI acquisitions, a move that shows how the biggest players in India’s IT sector are trying to keep control as artificial intelligence reshapes the work ordinary employees do. Two TCS executives told Reuters the company is betting AI will create new business rather than undermine outsourcing, even as investors worry the technology could cut demand for engineering teams, shorten project timelines and squeeze prices.
Who Has the Power
CEO K Krithivasan said TCS would be "ensuring that we have as many as 1% to 1.5% of our associates who could be what you would call FDEs." Based on TCS’s end-June headcount, that would mean roughly 5,900 to 8,900 employees. He did not say whether the company would hire externally or retrain existing staff. That silence matters. The people doing the work are left to wait while management decides whether they’ll be brought in, reshuffled, or simply absorbed into the next round of corporate restructuring.
TCS is India’s largest software services firm. The company’s plan puts it in direct competition with OpenAI, Anthropic and Microsoft, which have also expanded hiring for forward-deployed engineers to help clients deploy AI tools. These engineers embed with clients to speed up AI adoption and tailor tools to business needs. In other words, the labor gets pushed closer to the customer, while the company keeps tightening its grip on the deployment process.
Who Gets Crushed
The pressure comes from the same place it always does: the top. Investors are already worried that AI could disrupt India’s $315 billion IT services industry by reducing demand for engineering teams, shortening project timelines and squeezing prices as clients seek a share of productivity gains. That’s the hierarchy in plain sight. Productivity rises, and the people who actually build the systems are told to accept less.
Krithivasan tried to wave away the threat to outsourcing, saying companies still need partners such as TCS to integrate and deploy AI systems. He said, "What you need is a deep knowledge of the customer environment to make it work. That is where we differentiate ourselves. This has nothing to do with cost arbitrage. It's essentially because of the talent pool that we have built." The language is polished, but the message is blunt: TCS wants to remain the indispensable middle layer between clients and the technology they buy, even as automation threatens to hollow out the old model.
Companies are increasingly using multiple AI models and need partners such as TCS to connect those models with existing systems and manage data flows, he said. That’s the new arrangement. Not less power, just more layers.
What They're Calling Growth
TCS is also evaluating acquisitions in AI, data security and cybersecurity after largely shunning acquisitions for years and relying instead on organic growth until late 2025. CFO Samir Seksaria said, "We are looking at where we can find things which will help us enable or enhance our strategic positioning." That’s corporate language for buying more leverage.
The company’s annualised AI revenue growth slowed to 13% in the first quarter from 28% in the previous quarter. Krithivasan said he would like the business to grow about 25% quarter-on-quarter over the long term, though he said he did not expect a linear trajectory. The numbers show the pressure underneath the pitch. AI may be sold as the next great efficiency machine, but even TCS is watching the pace wobble.
TCS spends about $1 billion annually on talent development and making AI accessible internally, Seksaria said, with a focus on training, targeted hiring and niche recruitment in AI-native technologies. That money is part investment, part discipline. The firm is trying to shape the workforce around the machine, not the other way around. And while executives talk about strategy, positioning and growth, the people at the bottom are the ones who’ll have to live with the churn.