Prabhu RamFor years, the simplest way for a technology company to build more software was to hire more engineers.
More products, more customers and greater complexity meant bigger development teams. But US-based enterprise software company Salesforce is now testing whether that equation still holds in the age of AI. It has deployed AI coding agents, including Anthropic’s Claude Code, across its engineering organisation to see how much more existing teams can deliver without a corresponding increase in headcount.
The company operates major engineering, product development, and R&D hubs in Hyderabad, Bengaluru and other cities. The early results are striking. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has said the company has not hired additional engineers in recent months because AI coding agents have boosted productivity.
“We’re not hiring more engineers,” he said, adding that the company was mostly expanding in sales. Salesforce says work items completed by each developer rose 50.8% year-on-year in April 2026, while pull requests – the packages of code submitted for review – increased 79% per developer.
Salesforce’s deployment of AI coding agents provides early evidence of a structural shift. Engineers will likely spend less time on implementation and more on orchestration, validation and system design. But new products, technologies and growing software complexity will continue to create demand for engineering talent.
Prabhu Ram, VP, Industry Research Group at CMR.
Source: Financial Express
