TCS bets on 8,900 AI deployment engineers to defend India’s IT services model

Tata Consultancy Services plans to build a team of up to 8,900 forward-deployed AI engineers and is looking for acquisition targets in AI and cybersecurity, chief executive K Krithivasan said.

The move is India’s largest IT firm answering the question that has hung over the sector since the arrival of agentic AI in enterprise stacks, which is whether the industry that sells engineering hours has anything left to sell.

Krithivasan said TCS aims to convert between 1% and 1.5% of its associate base into forward-deployed engineers. Against a headcount of 593,798 at the end of June, that works out at roughly 5,900 to 8,900 people.

The term is borrowed from the AI labs, where forward-deployed engineers sit inside the client’s business and make the model actually do something. Chief operating officer Aarthi Subramanian described them as specialists who are multi-skilled but deep in one particular area, which is a...

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