American telecom giant AT&T’s India Development Center (IDC) is set to increase its headcount by adding 2,500-3,000 employees over the next two years. The IDC has nearly 2,000 employees working across three locations - Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad.
Although AT&T has been in India for about 40 years, from a development center perspective, the company started its journey around last year.
“The IDC was formed to create a technology powerhouse for AT&T in India. We primarily work with our AT&T Technology Services (ATS) Group, which covers the Chief Security Office, Chief Information Office, Chief Data Office, Chief Network Office, and consumer and business-centric technology services. All of that is housed in the ATS, and the IDC in India works with all of them,” Santosh Bijur, VP of India Development Center, AT&T, told businessline.
“When we started our journey last year, we were at about 800 people, and today we are about 2,000 people. We are focused on solving different problems for four towers. On the consumer and business side, we are working on migrating from legacy systems to modern SaaS platforms like Salesforce and ServiceNow. There is a lot of energy around switching to modern systems that enable us to run faster and deliver products and innovation. The new roles are related to these practice areas and start from entry level - from campus hires to mid-level and senior levels.”
The setup of the IDC engages all constituents of AT&T Technology Services and supports four towers. The consumer tower is called consumer technology experience (CTX) and the business tower, Business Technology Products and Development (BTPD). The Chief Information Office (CIO) oversees corporate systems, network services and field applications. The Chief Data Office (CDO) looks after data engineering, data science and Gen AI.
Bijur added, “We run the network for 72 million post-paid subscribers and eight-plus million fiber customers in the US. That is a significant network layout on the state side, and we run a part of our operations from India. So, we are looking at operations people to add to our network technology people. On the CDO side, we are adding to the data science and data engineering team, because we work on problems that require us to crunch the data,” he said, adding that the centre is looking at campus hires who undergo a three-month training programme.
Focus areas
The AT&T business has two aspects - the consumer and the enterprise business. The former focuses on the US and generates much of the company’s revenue, while the remaining 20 per cent comes from the enterprise business, which covers US businesses and the global networks of multinational companies.
“The entity in India, which started 40 years ago, was one of the first to provide International long-distance and data services to multinational companies in India. It supports multinational companies worldwide and in parts of India. Our customers are global companies, and they have multiple locations, one of them being here. We ensure they can have their full network, including in India, and don’t have to rely on other service providers,” said the VP of IDC.
Adding that the company has an opportunity to create a technology powerhouse here, Bijur said that this requires it to draw a lot of talent from India. “AT&T is here not only to run international businesses but to create technology centres and capabilities - everything from AI to digital technology, to back-office applications, the whole spectrum.”