Tech Hiring in India 2026: Entry-level job roles slip to 4.3%; data engineering share nearly doubles

According to a report on Tech Hiring in India 2026, data of the 18,752 live postings collected between 26 September 26 to October 26, 2026, from LinkedIn and Naukri company feeds reveals that, just 799 (4.3%) of jobs were tagged entry or junior level, while 9,656 (51.5%) asked for senior candidates and a further 572 for lead-level roles. Significantly, the share of data engineering postings nearly doubled from 4.3% in July to 7.7% in October. 

As per PrepNPlaced’s September 2026 report on tech hiring in India, for every entry-level opening there were twelve senior ones, up from eight in the July edition. The report highlights that hiring hasn't stopped but has just shifted towards experienced candidates. 

So freshers face tougher competition for a shrinking share of jobs. 

However, remote work is still rare in Indian tech hiring. Just 147 of the 18,752 live postings, that is 0.8%, were remote in October, up from 0.4% in July. 

Also read AI, data and digital skills drive fresher hiring as employers move beyond degree-based recruitment: Report

Tech Hiring: Roles in demand

Data engineering's share rose from 4.3% in July to 7.7%; however, software engineering still accounts for the largest share of job postings.

Phython: Technology in demand

Python is the most asked-for skill in about 28.2% of postings, followed by SQL at 21.6%. Among the cloud tools, Azure is at 19.2%, beating AWS at 17.1% and GCP at 8.5%. 

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Data engineering jobs in India

Among the 1,449 data-engineer postings, SQL appears in 45.2% and Python in 42.7%, is the must-have pair. 

Azure leads the cloud mentions at 32.2%, then AWS at 30.1% and GCP at 14.6%. In India, Azure is one of the most demanded. Databricks appears at 19.3%, Spark at 16.1%, Snowflake at 16.1%, Kafka at 9.8%, Airflow at 7.6%, and dbt at 5.0%. 

The modern-stack tools are differentiators, not entry requirements, the report added. 

Tech Job Postings in India: Bengaluru leads with about 7,107 postings, more than Hyderabad, Pune and Mumbai combined. Wipro is the top hirer with 1,258 postings, followed by Larsen & Toubro and NTT DATA.