Pune Jobs in IT

Two fresh graduates in the same year. Both have a degree. Both are based in Pune. One joins an IT services company and starts at ₹3.6 LPA. The other joins a BFSI Global Capability Centre in Kharadi and starts at ₹9 LPA. Same city. Same batch. Very different salaries. The difference is not luck. It is the role, the company type, and the preparation that went into landing there. Pune’s IT market in 2026 is not a flat landscape where everyone earns roughly the same. It is genuinely tiered, and understanding which roles sit at the top of that salary table is the most useful thing you can know before deciding what to study or where to apply. This blog covers the 7 highest-paying IT roles in Pune in 2026. For each one, we share real salary ranges, the names of companies actually hiring in the city, and what you need to get there. Quick answer: highest-paying IT jobs in Pune in 2026 by starting salary: GCC roles in Pune pay 25–60% more than IT services roles for the same position and experience level. [Source: PlugScale GCC Salary Benchmark India 2026.] Why Pune’s IT salaries are rising faster than most cities Before going role by role, there is one thing worth understanding about how Pune’s salary market actually works. It explains why two engineers doing the same role in the same city can earn so differently. Pune now has over 350 Global Capability Centres operating across Hinjewadi, Kharadi, Viman Nagar, Magarpatta, and Yerwada. These are not IT services companies taking on client projects. They are wholly-owned subsidiaries of global companies: Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Mastercard, Goldman Sachs, Siemens, Mercedes-Benz. When you work at a GCC, you are on the global company’s payroll, benchmarked against their global compensation standards, not Indian IT services norms. According to the PlugScale GCC Salary Benchmark India 2026, Pune salaries sit at 78 to 84% of Bangalore’s level for comparable GCC roles, and they are rising. GCC pay scales run 25 to 60% above IT services companies for the same role. That gap is the reason two freshers from the same graduation batch can earn ₹3.6 LPA and ₹9 LPA in the same city at the same time. Every salary number in this blog is presented with that context in mind. The company type matters as much as the role title. 1. AI and ML Engineer: the highest ceiling in Pune’s IT market If you want to understand where Pune’s IT salary ceiling actually sits in 2026, look at AI and ML engineering. It is not just the highest-paying tech role in the city. It is the fastest-growing one, and the talent supply has not caught up with demand. What this role actually involves An AI/ML Engineer designs, trains, and tests machine learning models against real data and deploys them for use by other systems. By 2026, this has expanded to Gen AI work, including the development of apps with LangChain, integration with OpenAI APIs, creation of RAG pipelines, and fine-tuning large language models to meet specific business requirements. This is not just simple data crunching. It’s engineering for manufacturing AI systems.  Salary in Pune in 2026 The salary premium for AI and ML engineers is significant and well-documented. According to the PlugScale GCC Salary Benchmark India 2026, AI engineers command a 40 to 60% premium over equivalent-experience backend engineers in India’s GCC ecosystem. Experience  Salary at IT services  Salary at GCC in Pune  Fresher (0 to 1 year)  ₹5 to 8 LPA  ₹8 to 14 LPA  Mid-level (3 to 5 years)  ₹12 to 18 LPA  ₹28 to 45 LPA  Senior (6 to 9 years)  ₹20 to 30 LPA  ₹48 to 72 LPA  These figures are indicative and vary based on skills, portfolio strength, and specific employer. Candidates with Gen AI project experience consistently land at the higher end of these ranges. Who is hiring in Pune? Mastercard India Tech Hub (Kharadi), Deutsche Bank India Technology, HSBC Technology India, Bajaj Finserv, Persistent Systems, and a growing number of AI-first startups in Baner and Hinjewadi. All run active AI and ML engineering teams in Pune. What do you need to get there? Python is non-negotiable. Beyond that: solid machine learning fundamentals, experience with at least one deep learning framework (TensorFlow or PyTorch), and in 2026, some Gen AI exposure; even a single project using LangChain or the OpenAI API puts a fresher ahead of most applicants. A deployed ML project on GitHub is the clearest signal a hiring team can see. Teknowell’s data science and AI course in Pune covers Python, ML, deep learning, Gen AI integration, and Power BI with live project work on real datasets throughout the course. 2. Data Scientist: Pune’s most in-demand GCC hire Data science isn’t new, but what companies expect from data scientists in 2026 has. Classical ML skills are the new baseline. The best candidates will be those who can blend ML with Gen AI fluency, subject matter expertise, and the ability to communicate findings to non-technical stakeholders.  What this role involves A data scientist spends their time cleaning and exploring data, building predictive or classification models, evaluating model performance, and turning the results into something a business team can act on. And many data scientists will be using Gen AI tools by 2026, using LLMs to make analytics features smarter or to automate the generation of insights. The output is not a webpage or application. It’s a recommendation, a prediction, or an AI-powered feature that someone else integrates into a product.  Salary in Pune in 2026 The average data scientist salary in Pune in 2026 ranges from ₹6 LPA to ₹18 LPA depending on experience, skills, and company type. Freshers in Pune with strong Python skills, ML knowledge, and real project portfolios typically earn between ₹4.5 LPA and ₹8 LPA at entry level. At BFSI GCCs in Kharadi and Viman Nagar, well-prepared freshers with Gen AI skills are seeing packages of ₹8 to 12 LPA. Experience  Salary range in