AI-ready marketing talent sees 20 to 30 percent salary surge in 2025

India’s hiring landscape in 2025 has been defined by contradictions. Layoffs made headlines across big tech and IT services, yet the demand for AI, data, and advanced digital talent surged in parallel. Marketing and advertising saw sharp salary premiums for professionals who mastered AI tools. Traditional tech slowed even as AI engineers commanded some of the highest compensation jumps in the market. Across sectors, companies hired more cautiously, but were willing to pay aggressively for real-world expertise that drives measurable outcomes.

This fragmented but opportunity-rich reality is shaping how India’s labour market recalibrated in 2025.

AI-Linked Roles Take the Biggest Salary Leaps

The clearest winners of 2025 were professionals who embedded AI, ML, analytics, and automation into their work. According to Sachin Alug, CEO of NLB Services, India saw an average salary correction of 9.5 percent this year. But the real shift was uneven, concentrated at the intersection of creativity, data, and intelligent automation.

Marketing, advertising, and media professionals who adapted to AI-driven tools saw compensation spikes of 20 to 30 percent. These improvements reflected a shift in strategic value: brands sought marketers who could deploy automation, predictive insights, content intelligence, and audience modeling rather than depend purely on intuition or legacy creative processes.

Traditional media roles corrected but lagged behind. In contrast, AI-related tech roles surged far ahead as companies competed intensely for advanced skill sets. Specialists with real-world deployment experience commanded premiums in the 10 to 12 lakh range. As India moves towards creating nearly four million AI jobs by 2030, companies prioritised engineers who could deliver value from day one.

Shailesh Khanna, Brand Lead at ManpowerGroup India, observed a similar trend. Professionals with AI, ML, or cybersecurity skills earned strong hikes, often 30 to 40 percent, especially on promotions or job switches. Globally, AI-enhanced marketing roles like AI marketing specialists or marketing automation architects earned 30 to 40 percent more than traditional marketing profiles. This premium underlined the rapid reshaping of creative industries where machine-assisted storytelling, dynamic content generation, and prompt-centred workflows are becoming the norm.

The AI Premium Is Real, But Talent Gaps Are Uneven

Across the board, AI expertise commanded clear premiums. Waheed Bidiwale, Partner and Global CEO at Wolfzhowl, said professionals with generative AI skills earned 15 to 20 percent higher salaries, with an additional 10 to 15 percent for MLPs proficiency. Engineers with real-world project experience often expected hikes of 50 percent or more in top-paying sectors.

But the shortage of AI talent is not uniform. As Bidiwale pointed out, basic AI skills are abundant, but the ability to architect AI-first solutions or understand business contexts is rare. Quality, not quantity, is the real constraint. While many junior engineers exist, those who combine conceptual strength with deployment ability are limited. This creates pockets of scarcity in areas like risk modeling, advanced analytics, agentic system design, and model optimisation.

Companies are also discovering that AI talent alone is not enough. They need people who understand product thinking, business logic, and the operational realities of AI integration. This hybrid need is why creative prompt engineering roles are gaining priority in marketing, while MLPs talent is becoming essential in tech.

Hiring Becomes Sharply Selective Across India Inc

One of the defining shifts of 2025 has been the decline of large-scale fresher hiring. Alug said India-based firms are significantly more selective this year, preferring talent with hands-on project experience, certifications, and domain knowledge. Exposure to GenAI, AI governance, and AI ethics has become a differentiator. Companies want professionals who can work on emerging technologies without steep learning curves.

Across sectors, hiring mirrors business priorities rather than headcount expansion. BFSI firms focused on digital lending, risk, analytics, and expansion into Tier II and III markets. GCCs continued to scale but moved from volume hiring to high-skill AI, cloud, and cybersecurity roles, particularly in Tier II innovation hubs.

SaaS companies prioritised sales, pre-sales, and GTM over pure tech hiring. Gaming companies accelerated hiring for specialised, high-end game development talent due to the content and IP boom. Quick-commerce platforms leaned heavily on gig workers and operations talent. Industrial automation saw targeted demand for engineering, IoT, and smart factory capabilities.

A Contradictory Year: Layoffs, AI Demand and Cautious Optimism

Despite widespread layoffs worldwide, the demand for AI and ML talent surged. Creative and prompt-engineering roles gained importance in marketing even as traditional content roles slowed. Brands increased spend on digital marketing, yet overall job creation in media and advertising remained uneven.

FMCG held strong despite earlier predictions of disruption. What stood out was an uptick in hiring among startups and smaller businesses even as larger firms remained cautious.

Bidiwale called 2025 a year of contradictions. It felt better than 2024 in several AI pockets but was far from a universal recovery. Labour markets showed cautious optimism rather than a full-blown boom, and this trend is expected to continue into 2026.

India’s job market is clearly moving towards a future where capability matters more than credentials and where salaries expand dramatically only in roles that marry AI fluency with business impact. For professionals willing to upskill, especially at the intersection of marketing and machine intelligence, 2025 has proven that the premium is both real and rapidly rising.