Cognizant Plans To Hire 25,000 Freshers In 2026 As AI Boosts Entry-Level Productivity
Cognizant Plans To Hire 25,000 Freshers In 2026 As AI Boosts Entry-Level Productivity
In a surprising counter to job-loss fears, the IT major says AI tools are helping expand its workforce pyramid, not shrink it.
Cognizant Technology Solutions has announced plans to hire around 24,000 to 25,000 fresh graduates in 2026, stepping up campus recruitment as artificial intelligence-driven delivery models improve productivity at the entry level.
The hiring target marks an increase of nearly 20 percent compared to 2025, when the company onboarded close to 20,000 graduates. The move comes at a time when AI is widely associated with potential job displacement, especially in technology services.
However, Cognizant’s management argues the opposite is unfolding within its delivery structure. With AI tools, automation, and agentic software enabling faster execution of routine tasks, early-career engineers are becoming productive sooner, supporting a broader hiring base.
CFO Jatin Dalal confirmed the hiring push while addressing the media after the company’s quarterly results. “We hired close to 20,000 school graduates in 2025… For next year we plan to increase this by about 20%. So we, we would be very happy to land around 240000-25000 for 2026,” he said.
CEO Ravi Kumar also highlighted how AI partnerships are reshaping the company’s talent model. “So our thesis is as we continue on our partnerships with Anthropic, Gemini, OpenAI, Microsoft, and all the AI platforms, you will notice that the value can be drifted to the bottom, distributed, and we can have a broader pyramid,” he said.
Cognizant noted that revenue growth is increasingly being decoupled from headcount growth. In 2025, the company’s revenues rose 6.4 percent in constant currency terms, while its workforce grew only about 4 percent, resulting in a 5 percent increase in revenue per employee.
Over the past year, revenue per employee rose around 5 percent, while margin per employee increased nearly 8 percent — a sign of growing efficiency driven by AI-assisted delivery.
Cognizant added about 14,800 employees overall in 2025 and said it will continue hiring fresh graduates across geographies, including India and the US, to embed AI capabilities early in careers and scale delivery through a mix of human and digital labour.
