Cognizant to Onboard 25,000 Freshers in 2026 Amid AI Push

Cognizant Technology Solutions has announced an ambitious recruitment plan to hire between 24,000 and 25,000 freshers in 2026.

This initiative marks a significant 20% increase from its 2025 intake of approximately 20,000 graduates.

The move signals a major strategic pivot as the company seeks to build a “broader talent pyramid” where early-career professionals, empowered by artificial intelligence, take on high-value responsibilities.

Cognizant “AI-First” Pyramid Strategy

CEO Ravi Kumar S highlighted that this hiring surge is part of a broader mission to decouple revenue growth from headcount growth.

By embedding AI assistants and automated workflows into daily tasks, Cognizant is enabling junior employees to perform complex software development and quality assurance work that previously required years of experience.

This “non-linear” growth model allowed the firm to increase its revenue per employee by 5% in 2025, even as its total workforce grew at a slower pace.

Learnability Over Experience

A key pillar of Cognizant’s 2026 strategy is the shift toward “learnability.”

Ravi noted that fresh graduates are often “digital natives” who do not need to “unlearn” old legacy coding habits.

To capture this talent, the company has introduced specialized hiring “swim lanes,” such as the “Tech Wizards” program for top-tier graduates from the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs).

Other categories include power programmers and specialized software engineers, ensuring a diverse range of technical expertise at the entry level.

Cognizant Accelerating “Time-to-Production”

The efficiency of Cognizant’s training pipeline has been a major driver for this expansion.

Of the 20,000 freshers hired in 2025, over 16,000 are already “in production,” working directly on client projects.

CFO Jatin Dalal confirmed that the company is comfortable raising its intake because AI-assisted environments allow junior engineers to become billable and productive much faster than in traditional delivery models.

Return to the “Winner’s Circle”

This massive hiring drive follows a stellar 2025 performance. During this time, Cognizant returned to its internal “Winner’s Circle” two years ahead of schedule.

Cognizant signed 28 large deals in 2025 and issued a robust 2026 revenue guidance of up to $22.66 billion.

The company is now doubling down on young talent to sustain its momentum in the global digital transformation market.

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