LTM says AI has collapsed its entry-level engineering roles and it no longer bids new deals with L0 staff

LTM, the Indian IT services company formerly known as LTIMindtree, says traditional entry-level engineering roles have collapsed because of AI, its chief delivery officer Gururaj Deshpande told Business Standard on 1 November 2026. "Any new deal that we bid for, we never put a L0 role," Deshpande said. The roles in question, the basic engineering grades LTM classifies as L0 to L2, have been under threat as AI writes code and compresses steps of the software development life cycle, the paper reports; LTM says it now wants AI-native engineers, new skills and outcome-based pricing instead. This is a hiring change, not a layoff: LTM has not announced job cuts, and its chief executive said in October that the company had made no layoffs because of AI. But it is one of the plainest statements yet from an Indian IT services employer that AI has removed the entry-level layer of its staffing model, the layer that has absorbed hundreds of thousands of engineering graduates a year. Only the opening of Business Standard's interview is available to non-subscribers, and this summary uses nothing beyond it.