Pakistan Tech Jobs Are Shrinking at Entry Level, and AI Is Why

Pakistan tech jobs at the entry level have dropped by roughly 25 percent over the past two years, and the culprit is not a slowing economy. It is AI quietly eating the exact tasks fresh graduates used to be hired for.

Here is the paradox nobody saw coming this cleanly: Pakistan’s IT and telecom exports just closed fiscal year 2025-26 at $4.6 billion, up 21 percent from $3.8 billion the year before. That is the country’s single largest services export category. And yet, according to the Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA), hiring for entry-level roles at major tech companies fell about 25 percent over the same stretch. Developers aged 22 to 25 saw employment drop nearly 20 percent since 2024. Growth and job losses, happening at the same time, in the same sector.

What’s actually being automated

Let me be direct: it is not senior engineering work disappearing. It is the repetitive stuff junior hires used to cut their teeth on. Basic web development, straightforward app builds, routine graphic design, first-draft content writing, manual QA testing — AI tools now do a version of all of it in minutes. Companies that once staffed a small army of junior developers to handle overflow work are finding they don’t need the army anymore.

The freelance market shows the same pattern, maybe sharper. Entry-level freelance listings fell from about 15 percent of the market to under 9 percent. Basic writing and translation gigs dropped 32 percent year-on-year as clients moved to AI tools directly. Syed Azfar Hussain, Project Director at the National Incubation Center Karachi, put it plainly: AI is taking over routine coding and support tasks, so companies simply don’t need as many people doing the same work. The real hiring demand, he noted, is shifting toward AI integration, cloud computing, cybersecurity, and data engineering.

Some of the case-by-case numbers are stark. One Islamabad software house cut 80 percent of its delivery-focused roles after automating routine tasks. A Karachi firm shrank from 150 employees to 35. That’s not a trend line, that’s a cliff for the people caught in it.

Not everyone reads the numbers the same way

Veqarul Islam, CEO of Jaffer Business Systems, has pushed back a bit on the headline framing. Freelancers now account for roughly $1.6 billion of that $4.6 billion export total, close to a quarter of it. He’s flagged a real possibility that some of that “growth” is full-time workers rebranding as freelancers for tax reasons, not organic expansion. He also pointed to Microsoft closing its Pakistan office in 2025 and Careem’s restructuring hitting local engineering teams as signs the picture is messier than the export figure alone suggests.

Yeh sirf numbers ka khel nahi hai — is the thing. Behind every percentage point is a 23-year-old computer science graduate wondering if four years of a degree still buys them a first job the way it did for the batch before them.

The government’s answer: reskill, don’t just count losses

Islamabad isn’t ignoring this. The National AI Policy 2025 sets a target of 3 million AI-related jobs by 2030, backed by training programs, scholarships, and investment incentives. Federal IT Minister Shaza Fatima Khawaja has framed the shift publicly as a transition rather than a straightforward loss — the argument being that Pakistan’s IT sector isn’t shrinking, it’s re-sorting itself around a different skill set. Whether that transition happens fast enough for this year’s graduating class is a separate question, and a harder one.

What’s clear is which skills are actually in demand right now: people who can direct AI tools rather than compete with them, cloud infrastructure specialists, cybersecurity practitioners, and data engineers who can build the pipelines AI systems run on. Companies aren’t hiring fewer people because they need less talent. They’re hiring differently.

Key Takeaways

• 25% drop in entry-level hiring: P@SHA data shows major tech companies cutting junior roles by roughly a quarter since 2024, even as overall exports grow.
• Exports still hit a record $4.6 billion: Pakistan’s IT and telecom sector grew 21% in FY2025-26, proving growth and job displacement aren’t mutually exclusive.
• Freelance entry work is drying up faster: Basic listings fell from 15% to under 9% of the market; writing and translation gigs dropped 32% year-on-year.
• Demand is shifting, not vanishing: AI integration, cloud, cybersecurity, and data engineering roles are absorbing the talent that routine coding jobs used to employ.
• Policy is catching up: The National AI Policy 2025 targets 3 million new AI-related jobs by 2030 through training and scholarships.

How TecniForge Can Help

At TecniForge, we’ve built our delivery model around exactly this shift — pairing experienced engineers with AI tooling rather than betting on a large bench of junior labor that AI can now do faster. Whether you need custom software development, AI integration into an existing product, or a cloud migration that sets you up for the next five years, our team builds scalable solutions without the overhead of an outdated hiring model. Talk to our experts about what a leaner, AI-augmented development team can do for your roadmap.

If you’re a business leader watching this shift from the outside, the question worth asking isn’t whether AI will change how software gets built. It already has. The question is whether your development partner adapted early enough to still deliver quality at speed — or whether they’re the ones still running the old playbook.