Infosys is making it very clear: if you can code circles around the average engineer, they’re finally ready to pay for it. As of today, December 25, 2025, the Bengaluru tech giant has officially reset the entry-level salary bar, offering up to ₹21 lakh per annum (LPA) for its elite “Specialist Programmer L3” role.
The thing is, this isn’t the standard ₹3.5 LPA “mass hiring” package we’ve seen for a decade. Infosys is hunting for “digitally native” talent to fuel their AI-first pivot. Or nothing. Let’s be real, with the gap between CEO pay and fresher salaries being such a massive point of criticism lately, this “Christmas Bonanza” is as much about PR as it is about programming. Those too.
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The New Pay Scale (2025-26)
The “Specialist” track is where the real money is. Infosys has split their entry-level roles into a hierarchy based strictly on your coding performance during their assessments.
| Role | Package (Trainee Level) | Who It’s For |
| Specialist Programmer L3 | ₹21 Lakh PA | The 1% of coders. Think R&D and core AI teams. |
| Specialist Programmer L2 | ₹16 Lakh PA | High-potential full-stack and polyglot devs. |
| Specialist Programmer L1 | ₹11 Lakh PA | Power programmers for complex projects. |
| Digital Specialist Engineer | ₹7 Lakh PA | Focused on enterprise and agile development. |
The Hiring Surge
And here’s the kicker: they aren’t just looking for five or ten people. Infosys has already onboarded 12,000 freshers in the first half of FY26 and is on a warpath to hit 20,000 hires by March 2026.
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The Target: 2025 and 2024 graduates (BE, BTech, ME, MTech, MCA).
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The Subjects: Computer Science and IT are obvious, but they’ve opened it to “circuit branches” like ECE and EEE too.
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The Test: Unlike the old days, the SP/DSE track often skips the generic aptitude/English sections. It’s a 3-hour technical marathon focused on heavy-duty Data Structures, Algorithms, and live coding.
The “AI-First” Strategy
It’s an ongoing situation where the traditional IT model is dying. Group CHRO Shaji Mathew confirmed that the company is upskilling its current workforce while aggressively hiring “new blood” who already know their way around LLMs and advanced automation.
If you’re a 2025 grad, the off-campus drive registration links are starting to pop up on the Infosys Careers portal. Just remember, to land that L3 spot, they aren’t just looking for a “coder”—they want someone who understands system architecture and can handle “Hard” difficulty LeetCode-style problems under pressure.
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