Q: Will AI replace software engineers in India? A: Infosys CEO Salil Parekh said jobs may change or be altered but are not going anywhere, and replacement will not happen overnight. The AI impact on Indian IT jobs is expected to be a shift toward new roles and specialisation as companies integrate agentic tools and modernise legacy systems. Q: What new roles does the article say will appear in the Indian IT industry? A: The article lists roles such as AI integration engineer, AI solutions architect, data and MLOps engineer, AI agent orchestrator, governance and risk specialist, conversational UX designer, and modernisation engineer. These positions focus on connecting models to enterprise data, orchestrating agents, managing security and compliance, and modernising legacy applications. Q: How will hiring trends change in Indian IT firms according to the report? A: Infosys plans to recruit 20,000 college graduates this year and has announced the same intake for next year, indicating continued campus hiring. Parekh expects that while agents will be used, overall headcount needs can still grow as pilots scale into large projects, so the AI impact on Indian IT jobs will include ongoing hiring alongside skill shifts. Q: Which technical and non-technical skills will increase an engineer’s value? A: Valuable technical skills include APIs, databases, secure coding, data readiness (cleaning, labeling, vector stores, retrieval), evaluation and monitoring, and cost/performance management, while domain knowledge and change skills also matter. These skills enable engineers to integrate models, monitor quality, control costs, and help teams redesign processes as AI is adopted. Q: Why do enterprises still need engineers for agentic AI? A: Agentic AI can plan tasks and call tools, but large enterprises have legacy systems, strict policies and slower dispersion, which makes integration complex. Engineers are needed to stitch models into identity systems, APIs and data lakes and to monitor quality, latency, cost and safety within organisations. Q: Where will the most immediate work and revenue from AI come within IT services? A: Immediate opportunities include AI services at scale, process redesign in customer operations, and legacy modernisation where AI helps refactor code, generate tests and document systems. Clients also demand trusted partners to move projects from pilots to production, creating work around model selection, data pipelines, testing, cost control and change management. Q: What practical steps should companies take now to adopt AI responsibly? A: Companies should start with high-volume, rules-heavy processes, set up a secure AI platform with access control, logging and evaluation, and invest in data quality and retrieval. They should pilot quickly, measure outcomes, scale what works, stop what does not, and train teams with playbooks for prompts, reviews and escalation. Q: How can students and early-career engineers prepare for the AI transition? A: Students and early-career engineers should build small projects that integrate multiple tools and APIs, learn retrieval and embeddings, practice secure patterns like PII protection and red teaming, and master evaluation with human-in-the-loop feedback. Using AI to speed coding, tests and documentation and demonstrating domain-specific impact will improve prospects as the AI impact on Indian IT jobs unfolds.