Centre Offers Hug Annual Pay to Attract Top AI Experts for Governance

The Central government has taken a key decision to accelerate the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in governance. It is prepared to offer senior AI experts a maximum remuneration of ₹4.58 lakh per month, or around ₹55 lakh annually, to attract top talent. Notably, this is nearly twice the salary of the country’s highest-ranking civil servants.

The government will recruit AI specialists through a panel of supplier agencies. The salary details are mentioned in the Request for Empanelment (RFE) reissued this month by the National e-Governance Division (NeGD) under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), according to an English-language news website.

The government had invited the first tender in November last year, attracting nearly 80 bidders. Following technical and financial evaluations, TCS, NEC Corporation of India, Kyndryl Solutions, Cactus Technology Solutions, Corover and Innefu Labs were empanelled in April, and empanelment letters were issued to the companies.

According to the rate card, an AI/Solutions Architect, Data Science Lead and AI/ML Lead will be paid ₹4,58,500 per month. A Programme or Product Manager will receive ₹4,12,500, while a Data Engineering Lead will be paid ₹3,66,666 per month. AI/ML Engineers, Data Scientists and MLOps Leads will receive ₹3,32,834 per month. A Business Analyst will receive the lowest remuneration, at ₹2.16 lakh per month.

These experts will be responsible for expanding the use of AI in government administration. As part of this initiative, the NeGD has stated that it plans to establish a multi-tenant inference server so that AI programmes can run on government infrastructure itself.