New Delhi : For the first time, Apple Inc has decided to come to an Indian engineering college with job offers. And after learning about the tech giant’s presence at this year’s campus recruitments, students at the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT-H) here have found a good reason to be elated with optimism.

“We are elated that Apple has decided to come for our campus placements this year. We are not sure of the kind of profiles that the company will be offering.However, it will provide an opportunity to the graduating students to showcase their skills before representatives of the firm,” said T V Devi Prasad, head of placements at IIITH, adding that the placements for Apple are likely to be for its Hyderabad or Bengaluru facilities.

Close to 350 BTech, BE, MTech and MSc (research) students from the institute have so far registered for the placement drive that is set to begin in December.

Officials said they observed a rise in the number of companies hiring for artificial intelligence (AI), data science, automation and deep learning this placement season. “The companies will be holding technical interviews in which students who are well acquainted with Python (a computing language) will be preferred. Majority of them are offering jobs for product development and research and development profiles,” said Prasad.

“The requirement for hardware engineers is high this year with many companies looking forward to hiring students with knowledge in the application-specific integrated circuit and design verification. There is also high demand for students who have knowledge into 2D-3D graphic in mobile communication,” said Prasad.

Only one company, Indeed, has registered with the institution for an overseas offer so far.