Artificial Intelligence and India’s Engineering future: Jobs are changing, not disappearing

AI can build, predict, and perfect. It can outpace teams and clear the clutter. But it cannot shoulder what defines an engineer — the moment of choice, the weight of a yes or a no.

Bengaluru: Once upon a time, not too long ago, when you walked into a multi-storied office tower in Bengaluru or Hyderabad — or any of India’s IT hubs — you would have seen rows of cubicles with engineers bent over their screens, eyes fixed on lines of code that stretched late into the night. On the factory floor, you would have seen teams sketching designs on whiteboards, testing prototypes that snapped or stalled too soon, and sprinting across oil-stained floors when a machine broke down. Offshore teams in India lived this grind every day, powering global tech and manufacturing with scale, stamina, and precision.

Then came generative AI. In a blink, the familiar rhythm of engineering — design, test, repeat — was upended. Suddenly, machines weren’t just assisting; they were taking on the role of co-creators. What began with copilots for code and models for predicting equipment failures is already moving further, and fast.

Ten years from now, AI may not stop at writing code or designing digital twins. It could build factories that run on their own, discover materials humans never imagined, and even sketch blueprints for habitats beyond Earth.

Today’s engineers are empowered to move beyond execution into strategic thinking—shaping systems that learn, adapt, and evolve. This transformation instills a deeper sense of purpose and responsibility.

Satish H C, Executive Vice President & Chief Delivery Officer, Infosys

So will engineers still matter when machines can simulate entire economies? Will they still be relevant when AI balances global energy webs that stretch across continents? Will they even be needed when swarms of robots, trained by algorithms, can build in places humans cannot survive?

As layoffs ripple across the tech industry, the country faces its own pressing question: if overseas clients can lean on AI agents, will they still send projects to Bengaluru, Hyderabad, or Pune — or even contracts to India’s factories and R&D hubs?

For me, the most exciting shift is watching AI move from being an assistant to becoming an autonomous builder.

PVN Pavan Kumar, Vice President, APJ at Office of the CTO, SAP

If the questions are big, the answers from industry are deliberately careful. AI, they say, is not taking engineers out of the picture, but it is rewriting the nature of their work. Ingenuity, judgement, and oversight remain essential — yet the profession now calls for adaptation and new discipline.

Infosys sets the tone around the craft itself. Satish H C, Executive Vice President & Chief Delivery Officer, Infosys, calls it a move “from a process- and skill-driven discipline into a cognitive, adaptive one powered by human–machine collaboration.” For him, digital twins and AI agents are partners in a larger orchestration.

While AI expedites iterations and ideations, the design sign-off is still done by the product owner and design leads.

Amith Singhee, Director, IBM Research India; CTO, IBM India & South Asia

The shift is not only about faster cycles but also about collapsing boundaries between engineering and business. Mukesh Chaudhary, Lead - Data and AI, Advanced Technology Centers GlobalNetwork, Accenture, says, “The integration of AI into engineering workflows has compressed solution development, enabling rapid prototyping and faster deployment.” That speed, he argues, now forces engineers to think beyond code — to step into strategy and judgement.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) adds another dimension to this shift, focusing on the fundamentals of engineering itself. Rather than just accelerating cycles, the company sees AI as changing the very questions engineers must ask. Dr Harrick Vin, Chief Technology Officer, TCS, says AI is shifting engineers from execution to interrogation. “The infusion of AI in engineering will require engineers to become significantly better at addressing the why and the what questions, in addition to answering the how questions, the traditional forte of engineering.” He adds that engineers are no longer just doers but reviewers and trainers of intelligent machines — a role that blends soft skills with technical depth.

The role of engineers is changing, from being doers of engineering work to trainers and interrogators of intelligent machines, reviewers of work done by machines, and owners of critical thinking and creativity.

Harrick Vin, Chief Technology Officer, TCS

From fear to curiosity

AI is also changing how engineers see themselves. Ganesan Karuppanaicker, Chief Technology Officer, Birlasoft, observes that what began as anxiety is now turning into opportunity. “AI has radically compressed the design and iteration cycle … and elevated engineers from troubleshooters to lifecycle optimisers,” he says — a shift that has moved many from fear to genuine curiosity.

Beyond efficiency and iteration lies the question of identity: what does it mean to be an engineer in the age of AI? PVN Pavan Kumar, Vice President, APJ at Office of the CTO, SAP, likens it to moving from bricklaying to architecture. “You’re designing the house now, not stacking the bricks,” he says, pointing to a future where engineers guide prompts and decisions rather than type every line of code.

Now, engineers must wear a business hat, interacting with clients, understanding and solving business challenges, and building minimal viable products with agility.

Mukesh Chaudhary, Lead - Data & AI, Advanced Technology Centers Global Network, Accenture

As AI moves from the periphery into the core of engineering, the debate shifts from what it can do to how well it can do it. That’s where IBM places its emphasis.

Amith Singhee, Director, IBM Research India and CTO, IBM India/South Asia, says AI “elevates quality and frees time for creativity and innovation,” but cautions that this promise holds only if engineers take responsibility for reskilling and guiding the technology with discipline.

In manufacturing, mistakes don’t just cost money — they can derail months of effort. That is why AI here is measured less by hype and more by its ability to reduce error and take weight off weary teams. Jacob Peter, Executive Board of Management – Mobility R&D, Bosch Global Software Technologies, and Bosch Digital, says the technology “simplifies mundane work” and accelerates development, giving engineers back time once lost to repetition.

AI is augmenting engineers, shifting their focus from repetitive tasks to creativity, strategy, and building for long-term impact.

Parul Jain, VP - Software Engineering, Salesforce

Risk and ethics

Finance carries a different burden: trust. Every wrong calculation risks shaking confidence in entire systems. Engineers who once focused only on code now find themselves drawn into questions of risk, ethics, and accountability. Ruchika Panesar Country Head, India and Chief Digital & Information Officer, Group COO Functions, NatWest Group, notes that they now sit inside decision science and modelling, blending “design thinking, data literacy, and ethical awareness” with technical skill.

Entrepreneurs see the change in starker terms because they live closer to the edge. For them, AI is not abstract — it is survival. Harneet Singh, Founder & Chief AI Officer, Rabbitt AI, puts it bluntly: the shift is like moving “from shovels to JCBs.” In his view, engineers are no longer the ones digging line by line in the dirt. Instead, they stand above the pit, supervising the machine that does the heavy lifting. The skill, he suggests, lies not in the brute force of execution but in guiding, checking, and correcting what the machine produces.

Over the next two decades, engineering will be shaped by AI, sustainable design, and closer collaboration between humans and machines.

Sudha KV, Vice President, Dell Technologies

Intelligence at scale

Education leaders warn that the definition of an engineer itself is shifting. It’s not just about writing code or keeping systems running — it’s about enabling intelligence at scale. Vinod Venkatraman, Chief Technology Officer, Great Learning, says, “AI in engineering is best seen as both a tool and a collaborator rather than just a disruptor.”

For industries built on trust, the stakes are sharper still. Ganesh Sivaramalingam, Director — Solution Architecture, TransUnion GCC India, says engineering is shifting from traditional design and development to intelligent orchestration of global platforms. “AI empowers engineers to optimise supply chains, predict system failures, and design resilient infrastructure,” he notes, adding that today’s engineer must be a hybrid thinker fluent in both domain and data science.

Good engineers work diligently to address challenges as they arise. Great engineers, however, invest time in solutions that eliminate entire categories of future problems.

Kusum Saini, Director – Principal Architect, Simplilearn

Resilience is where infrastructure companies see AI’s biggest impact. Ajeya Motaganahalli, Vice President of Engineering and Managing Director, Pure Storage India R&D, calls AI an augmentor and collaborator, not yet a disruptor. “AI accelerates productivity by helping engineers analyze telemetry data, automate repetitive coding tasks, and even generate insights from thousands of reports,” he says. Decisions on architecture, trade-offs, and accountability, he adds, remain firmly human-led.

But resilient systems are only one side of the equation; resilient careers are the other. The same forces that reshape data workflows are also rewriting how engineers are hired, trained, and retained. Avinash Bhat, Global Head, Customer Experience & India Delivery Head, Randstad Digital, says AI is at once a tool, collaborator, and disruptor. “The age of AI is not about replacing engineers, but about empowering them to lead innovation,” he says.

From a classic ‘Let’s start building something’ approach, engineers will now need to focus more on clearer problem definition. Understanding a domain and adopting systems thinking will become more important than just translating a requirement into code.

Jacob Peter, Executive Board of Management Mobility R&D, Bosch Global Software Technologies, and Bosch Digital

That question of relevance naturally opens up to the longer horizon. What kind of engineers will the world need two decades from now — and what role should India play in shaping that future? Sudha KV, Vice President, Dell Technologies, sees the next era defined by AI, sustainable design, and closer collaboration between humans and machines. With powerful AI agents taking on more load, she says, the focus of learning will shift back to “core engineering and innovations involving power, cooling, and user experience.” She stresses the need for diversity and entrepreneurship, adding that India, with its demographic advantage and diverse talent pool, is well placed to lead not only in producing engineers but also in building the educational content that will train them.

AI has taken over the grunt work — the bug fixes, the test cycles, the endless prototypes. What remains on the engineer’s desk is the part no machine can resolve. The irony of AI in engineering is that it makes the human more visible. The code may be automated, the prototypes simulated, the risks modelled — but the call, the final “yes” or “no,” still belongs to humans.

Companies are no longer limiting AI knowledge to technical teams and are training across the board, from HR to admin to engineering, to leverage AI responsibly.

Vinod Venkatraman, Chief Technology Officer, Great Learning