AI, algo trading companies set to steal the show at IIT placements

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. The Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) are set to witness a scramble for talent beginning Sunday, as some of the world's top artificial intelligence and algo trading firms arrive to snap up their best and brightest. Some of the top offers this year are close to a couple of crores, placement cell executives said, as the older IITs get ready to kick off their annual placement season.

With the AI excitement sweeping over the technology landscape, interest in conventional roles such as product manager and regular engineers appears to have ebbed. According to placement executives at the IITs, some of the top demands are for experts in cognitive science, data scientists, quantitative strategists and developers, and AI-focused developers, researchers and application engineers. The race for AI talent stands out in a curious job description from Palo Alto-based Turing: The candidate must be able to frame a multiple-choice question paper that Google and ChatGPT can't solve.

The successful candidate could join with the option to work from home, a student who saw the job description said. "We are excited about the talent from IITs," said an executive from US-based Abacus AI, which is looking to hire during the IIT placements. "We think these engineers can completely take AI to the next level and create AI agents and engineers that, in turn, can create applied AI systems," the official said.