By Sai Ishwarbharath B

BENGALURU (Reuters) - U.S. aerospace and defence giant RTX Corp ( RTX ) plans to hire 1,000 more people to its 7,000-strong workforce in India by 2027, its top executives told Reuters, as it looks for more engineers and data scientists to power its global operations.

The jobs will be added across RTX's units, including around 300 engineers for aircraft engine maker Pratt & Whitney over the next 12-18 months, and 700 at the aerospace supplier Collins Aerospace over the next 3 years.

Global aerospace and defence firms such as Airbus, Rolls-Royce Holdings and Lockheed Martin also have technology and engineering operations in India. These units are known as global capability centres (GCCs) and support the companies in their daily operations, and research and development, among others.

"India, from an RTX perspective, is not a low-cost destination. It is our talent hub. We have around 150 global roles, running their teams sitting out of India. Our biggest export is our talent," said Collins Aerospace Vice President of Engineering Savyasachi Srinivas on Tuesday.

Collins Aerospace, which manufactures evacuation slides, cabin and pilot seats, and avionic sensors in India primarily for export, also plans to operate from a larger factory in the southern city of Bengaluru in 2026 after consolidating three manufacturing sites, Srinivas said.

The market size of India's GCCs is expected to grow to $99 billion-$105 billion by fiscal 2030 from $64.6 billion in fiscal 2024, according to a report by IT industry body Nasscom and consulting firm Zinnov.

"Our (India) centre works as a hub in enabling global teams through digital transformation, data analytics, and working on small language models (SLMs) and large language models (LLMs) for easier maintenance and inspections," said Jayant Mukherjee, the head of Asia-Pacific and India Digital Capability Center at Pratt & Whitney on Tuesday.

In keeping with the global trend, the Bengaluru-based centre wants to reduce its dependence on outsourcing firms and do more technology work in-house to retain talent and protect intellectual property rights.

"We can't become 0% dependent on outsourcing partners," said Mukherjee, who hopes his centre can get at least 55% of technology work done in-house over the next three years from about a third currently.

Pratt & Whitney has signed outsourcing deals with Cyient and DXC Technology in the past. RTX emerged from a $121 billion combination of United Technologies and Raytheon in 2020.

(Reporting by Sai Ishwarbharath B; Editing by Dhanya Skariachan and Abinaya Vijayaraghavan)