Demand for professionals skilled in AI and machine learning is soaring in India, reports the Times of India, citing staffing firms. Randstad says hiring for AI and ML roles has been increasing by 30% each year since the pandemic, while demand for other digital skills has been growing at half that rate. It estimates there are about 200,000 professionals skilled in AI/ML in India.

Randstad’s global delivery and talent officer Rohit Kishore said the growing relevance of Gen AI has created new job roles, and that organisations are constantly striving to bring AI and ML to the core of their digital transformation journey.

Meanwhile, Jung Bahadur, director for talent solutions at professional services firm Aon says global capability centres of MNCs (multinational corporations) in India are driving the growth in demand for AI and ML-related roles. Aon’s data shows salaries for AI and ML roles are substantially higher than for most other roles.

At the same time, Krishna Vij, business head at Teamlease, says that at least a dozen new roles have come up in the AI/ML area. At the entry level, there are roles like chatbot developer and prompt engineer. At the mid to senior level, there are roles like AI ethics specialist and robotics engineer. Vij added that upskilling can help fill some of these roles.