Amid regulatory pressure on local hiring in the United States Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest IT services company , said it hired more than 12,500 people in the country in the last five years, and expects to remain at par or exceed prior years' levels for 2017.The company said, a regulatory filing, it has invested nearly $3 billion in the US over the past three years, in terms of employment, new innovation labs, extensive nationwide STEM (Science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education programmes, and academic partnerships and endowments. TCS said it that will engage more than two million US students by 2022.This is the first time India's largest IT services company disclosed numbers on hiring in the U.S. The development comes at a time when there are rising concerns on protectionism in the U.S. after the election of President Donald Trump who is keen on clamping down on H-1B visas - on which the Indian IT sector is particularly dependent.Rival IT firm Infosys plans to hire more than 10,000 people — a mix of freshers and experienced people — in the U.S. over the next two years. Cognizant, which hired 4,000 people in the US in 2016, too expects to accelerate its pace of hiring.TCS, the Mumbai-headquartered company, said it regularly has about 800-900 open positions – quarter to quarter – in locations from Texas California and Ohio, to North Carolina, Pennsylvania and New York.The jobs, it added, are focused on digital business transformation include digital development , operations and agile software development engineers, digital user experience (UX) designers, cloud architects, and autonomous drone operators.“TCS is proud to be a significant employment and talent development force in the US,” said Surya Kant, President of North America, UK and Europe, TCS. “Our industry leading US recruitment, advanced digital training of employees, and academic and STEM partnership programs act as a key contributor to the US innovation economy, while also preparing the current and upcoming workforce."At TCS annual general meeting of shareholders earlier in the month, the company's new CEO Rajesh Gopinathan said at its annual general meeting this month that the hired 79,000 people globally last fiscal, including 11,500 in foreign markets.Indian IT services companies are locked in a fierce talent arms race as they look to hire in overseas markets and are beginning to poach from familiar hunting grounds — each other’s rolls, ET reported earlier in the week.TCS said that over the past five years, the company has steadily increased its relationships and recruitment from more than 75 US college campuses, for both undergraduate and Master’s students.The company's onsite activities include career fairs and onsite interviewing, company experts discussing specific areas such as cloud, automation and artificial intelligence, and partnering with career centers to prepare students for interview processes.TCS said invites select students to nearby company facilities to host immersion days, engagement with leadership teams and recent campus hires, and tours of innovation labs. Students in additional colleges are virtually engaged in similar sessions through channels such as video interviewing and mentoring, it added.