Postgraduate students at India ’s premier engineering colleges are in higher demand this year, as companies look to hire talent with stronger domain knowledge for roles in emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics and machine learning.Trends from Indian Institutes of Technology in Kanpur, Chennai and Roorkee suggest at least a 30% rise in offers to PG students this placement season at leading IITs, with an up to 90% jump in top salaries. Among IITs that commenced operations in the past decade, the number of offers to PG students and the top salary increased twoand-a-half times at Gandhinagar.Typically, a higher percentage of undergraduate students gets placed during campus hiring than those pursuing postgraduate degrees. But with the focus of businesses, especially in the technology sector, shifting to emerging fields like artificial intelligence and robotics, demand for talent in such niche areas has grown at a faster pace, opening up more opportunities for PG students. In fact, they are getting higher number of offers from non-technical areas too, as recruiters expect them to stay longer on their jobs than undergraduates who may be still undecided about their career path.“More and more PG students are in demand as companies are looking at hiring domain knowledge specialists. Especially within IT and even in other sectors, companies prefer to hire postgraduate students to build tech teams,” said Ashok Pamidi, a senior director and member of the outreach programme at Nasscom PG students, both from STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) and humanities streams are in demand for jobs in emerging technologies.“Master’s students are clearer about what they want to pursue in their career and hence bring stable talent to the organisation,” said Kiranmai Pendyala, head of India HR at American chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices, which prefers PG students over undergraduates.“PG students have invested in acquiring specialised education in a niche space of engineering, whereas undergraduate students are often still deciding their career paths and are likely to move on to other pursuits,” said Pendyala, who also hires from regional colleges, especially in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka.At IIT-Kanpur, as many as 432 PG students accepted job offers at this year’s placement season, a 33% increase compared with last year’s number of 325.PG students are usually picked for engineering R&D, analyst and faculty positions. Those pursuing dual degrees mostly get non-technical positions. “The number of analyst and R&D positions have grown this year as compared to last year,” said Harshit Omar, placement coordinator at IIT-Kanpur.At Kanpur, the top recruiters of PG students were Intel, Tata Motors , HSBC, ExxonMobil , EXL Services and Tata Steel. The average salary is estimated to be around Rs 14 lakh a year, compared with Rs 12.8 lakh last year.At IIT-Gandhinagar, the average salary for PG students has increased nearly 40%, with the top offer being 167% more than last year, said Abhaj Raj Gautam, head of career development services.The institute declined to give specific salary numbers at this stage.The top recruiters in Gandhinagar included Bombardier Transportation, Cognizant, Goldman Sachs , John Deere, Marvell, Matrix Comsec and MCX India.PG students, including those pursuing dual degrees, received more offers than undergraduates this year at IIT-Madras and IIT-Bombay. IIT-Madras’ training and placement adviser Manu Santhanam said PG students, including those pursuing dual degrees, bagged almost 600 of the 888 offers made by companies such as Intel, Samsung R&D, Mercedes-Benz, Renault-Nissan and Airbus so far during the ongoing placement season.This year, IIT-Madras gave premium slots to companies that were hiring only PG students. “This resulted in a good number of offers for PG students,” said Santhanam.At IIT-Bombay, 637 of the 1,007 offers went to PG and other non-B-Tech students. PG offers rose 45% in the case of IIT-Roorkee to 213 so far this season, placement-in-charge NP Padhy said. The highest pay package at Roorkee so far this year was Rs 38 lakh, compared with Rs 20 lakh last year.