Egnyte, a cloud content governance company valued at $1.5 billion, is continuing to hire junior engineers despite integrating AI coding tools across its global team of over 350 developers. The company is leveraging AI to accelerate the onboarding process for new hires, enhance their understanding of the codebase, and expedite their progression to becoming senior contributors.
This approach contrasts with the prevailing narrative of 2025, which suggested that automation would lead to a reduction in the number of software developers. Instead, Egnyte is demonstrating how enterprises can utilize AI to expand their engineering capabilities while maintaining human oversight.
Amrit Jassal, Egnyte's CTO and co-founder, stated that eliminating engineers or ceasing the hiring of junior engineers is not a likely outcome for the company. "You've got to have people, you're training and doing all types of succession planning," Jassal said. "The junior engineer of today is the senior engineer of tomorrow."
Egnyte, whose platform is used by over 22,000 organizations including NASDAQ, Red Bull, and BuzzFeed, has implemented several AI coding tools, including Claude Code, Cursor, Augment, and Gemini CLI. These tools are intended to support the company's core business strategies and facilitate expansion. The company emphasizes that these tools are designed to augment, not replace, human developers. For example, Claude Code can assist with code completion and debugging, while Cursor can help navigate complex codebases. Augment provides real-time code analysis and suggestions, and Gemini CLI automates common command-line tasks.
The company believes that AI can help junior engineers become productive more quickly by providing them with access to information and assistance that would otherwise take months or years to acquire. By using AI to automate repetitive tasks and provide guidance, Egnyte aims to free up its engineers to focus on more creative and strategic work.
The impact of AI on the software development industry is a subject of ongoing debate. While some experts predict that AI will eventually replace many human developers, others believe that AI will primarily serve as a tool to enhance developer productivity and creativity. Egnyte's approach suggests that the latter scenario is more likely, at least in the near term. The company's continued investment in junior engineers indicates a belief that human developers will remain essential for building and maintaining complex software systems.
Egnyte plans to continue expanding its use of AI coding tools and exploring new ways to leverage AI to improve its engineering processes. The company is also committed to providing its engineers with the training and support they need to effectively use these tools.
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