How Hyderabad is catching up to Bengaluru

The city, long seen as a back-office base, is now luring high-value jobs in data engineering, artificial intelligence (AI) and research and development (R&D)—fields that have traditionally clustered in Bengaluru. Staffing executives say companies are shifting more senior-level roles to Hyderabad, pushing up its median salaries at a faster clip than in Bengaluru.

Data underscores the shift. Staffing firm TeamLease said median pay for software product engineering roles has risen 8.6% this year to ₹30.4 lakh in Hyderabad, outpacing Bengaluru’s 5.6% increase to ₹33.8 lakh. For engineering, research and development roles, salaries have jumped 11.1% to ₹20 lakh in Hyderabad, versus a 6.5% rise to ₹24.5 lakh in Bengaluru.

Executives attribute this divergence not to higher raise percentages but to an influx of senior hires in Hyderabad lifting overall medians.

“Bigger-ticket tech jobs aren’t just about the roles—lifestyle and liveability are two major factors for senior resources who have likely been exposed to life in developed tech economies, majorly Silicon Valley in the US,” said Sunil Chemmankotil, India country manager of Adecco, a staffing consultancy.

“Hyderabad is looking to offer more in this regard in terms of space, returns of real estate investments, and amenities that are not inferior to what Bengaluru offers, leading to companies with presence in Bengaluru setting up new teams in Hyderabad instead. Newer and smaller companies alike are being attracted too,” Chemmankotil said.

The shift matters because while top tech roles were largely concentrated in Bengaluru, and only a few isolated jobs existed in Hyderabad and Gurugram, decentralizing senior positions can have a transformative effect. Moving talent away from a concentrated metropolitan hub can help develop new top-tier cities, attract senior executives from abroad, reduce the strain on tier-I cities, and diversify the availability of tech jobs across the country.

Hyderabad rising

Global tech firms are responding to these shifts by expanding senior teams in Hyderabad.

At Google, about 70% of India roles are based in Bengaluru. But Hyderabad is catching up. The company recently based a new ‘AI Accelerator for HR’ team there and is seeking an engineering director with more than 15 years of experience, a senior role that would earlier have been housed in Bengaluru. Google is also building its largest office outside the US in Hyderabad, expected to be completed and staffed by next year.

Similarly, Amazon houses nearly 80% of its India jobs in Bengaluru, yet Hyderabad is starting to win more senior mandates. Last week, the company listed an opening for a senior applied AI scientist in Hyderabad to lead its natural language processing, large language models and computer vision teams for commerce operations.

Meta has no current openings in Hyderabad but has signed a five-year lease extension for its office there in December. Apple has 30% of its India jobs in Hyderabad, including recent leadership listings in product management, data solutions architecture and systems architecture.

In a research note on 8 April, Srini Vaddepalli, practice leader at tech services advisory firm HFS Research wrote, “Companies such as Google, Microsoft, JPMorgan, DBS Bank, Bosch, Hyundai Mobis, Eastman Chemical, Meta, and Goldman Sachs are transforming their Hyderabad centres into AI R&D labs.”

“Enterprises are moving beyond basic automation to adopt AI-driven workflows, achieving 40% cost reductions and increased output. Hyderabad is key to these global projects, housing 14% of India’s digital tech talent and more than 300,000 new graduates yearly—second only to Bengaluru. The former currently hosts 20% of India’s global capability centres (GCCs), and this figure is growing,” the note added.

Executives say this growth is being spurred by state policy support.

Policy push

The Telangana government is expected to soon roll out a policy to promote captive engineering hubs, aimed at easing business and attracting big-ticket tech roles. It will offer incentives, a single-window approval system, and a ‘plug-and-play’ model to help companies set up engineering facilities in non-metro cities without heavy upfront costs.

Mint research of current job postings also showed more high-value engineering roles opening in Hyderabad. Companies hiring for such positions there include Microsoft, Qualcomm, Micron and Verizon from the U.S., Swiss engineering group ABB, and homegrown conglomerate Larsen & Toubro.

Senior tech roles in Hyderabad now number in the hundreds, and the city offers a broader range of positions than in the past.

Bengaluru still dominates India’s tech workforce. But with more senior roles now landing in Hyderabad, it is no longer the sole star of the country’s tech ecosystem.

“Bengaluru still offers higher pay and remains the preferred base for global product development, but Hyderabad is narrowing the gap with its lower living costs, strong growth of global capability centres (GCCs), and government support,” said Neeti Sharma, chief executive of TeamLease Digital.

These openings primarily target senior and mid-senior technology positions, according to industry experts.

GCCs—captive engineering hubs run in-house—have gained traction as firms move beyond outsourcing to providers such as Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys, and HCL Technologies

According to industry body National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom), India now has more than 1,760 GCCs, of which 875 are in Bengaluru and 355 in Hyderabad.

A senior consultant, who is working with multiple states, said the rise in senior tech jobs across cities beyond Bengaluru is coming as more state governments are working on their own GCC policies, including Kerala, Punjab, and Haryana, among others.

Karnataka’s push to look beyond Bengaluru follows repeated complaints of traffic snarls and pothole-ridden roads among the city’s 450,000 IT workers. Hyderabad’s relative open spaces, by contrast, are alluring to multinationals looking to set up shop in India.

“Hyderabad has been a hub for top pharmaceutical engineering units for a long time. What’s happening today is that these jobs are now larger in volume, and more companies are diversifying beyond Bengaluru. This would be a major way to decongest India’s top metros, and take a wider volume of tech jobs to other cities,” said Jaspreet Singh, partner at leader, GCC at management consulting firm, Grant Thornton Bharat.

Singh said as senior roles move to Hyderabad across industries, other cities in the state are beginning to attract early-stage tech positions.

“We’ve seen this happen across cities like Lucknow and Dehradun, and this diversification of roles beyond one hub is a great thing for developing top talent in-house and giving them better lifestyle conditions,” he added.