According to the Annual Employability Survey by Aspiring Minds, 2.5% of Indian engineers possess technical skills in artificial intelligence (AI) that the industry requires Many sectors are aggressively adopting new-age technologies like machine learning, creating new job opportunities--however, a massive skills gap exists across industries. According to the Annual Employability Survey by Aspiring Minds, 80% of Indian engineers are not fit for jobs in the knowledge economy. Only 2.5% of them possess technical skills in artificial intelligence (AI) that the industry requires. According to the Annual Employability Survey by Aspiring Minds, 2.5% of Indian engineers possess technical skills in artificial intelligence (AI) that the industry requires Many sectors are aggressively adopting new-age technologies like machine learning, creating new job opportunities--however, a massive skills gap exists across industries. According to the Annual Employability Survey by Aspiring Minds, 80% of Indian engineers are not fit for jobs in the knowledge economy.

International Data Corp (IDC) projects that by 2024, two-thirds of employees in high-performing Forbes Global 2000 enterprises will move from static, siloed roles and processes to become part of dynamic, multi-disciplinary, outcome-focused reconfigurable teams. Factors such as the proliferation of network-connected devices, the adoption of cloud services, and the exponential rise in security threats have changed the nature of jobs and skills required. 'It's a work transformation that embraces human-machine collaboration, enables new employee skillsets and work experiences, and supports a rapidly changing workspace model independent of physical location or time of day'. The World Economic Forum estimate for 2020 is 44 zettabytes of data in the digital universe, which would mean approx 40 times more bytes than there are stars in the observable universe. Demand will be high for IT workers with an ability to analyse the dizzying amounts of data being generated given that data is the building block of technologies such as Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is being counted (pdf) among the hottest startup sectors in India this year, but the highly specialised space is struggling to grow due to the lack of a primary input: engineers. "Forget getting people of our choice, we don't even get applications when we advertise for positions for our AI team," said 25-year-old Tushar Chhabra, co-founder of Cron Systems, which builds internet of things (IOT)-related solutions for the defence sector. "It's as if people are scared of the words'artificial intelligence.' They start freaking out when we ask them questions about AI." India has over 170 startups focused purely on AI, which have together raised over $36 million. The sector has received validation from marquee investors like Sequoia Capital, Kalaari Capital, and business icon Ratan Tata.

Indian engineers could be hurt in more ways than one by US president-elect Donald Trump's promise to bring back jobs for Americans. From the early days of his campaign, Trump's anti-immigrant stance has included plans to cut down on work visas, known as H-1B, that allow skilled foreign workers to work full-time in the US for at least six years. In March, the real estate mogul said, if elected, he would "end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labour program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first for every visa and immigration program." His attorney general pick, Senator Jeff Sessions, has long advocated clipping the program. If H-1B visa allocations are limited under a Trump presidency, it would be bad news for Indians who have been the recipients of the highest number (pdf) of such visas all these years.