The local boss of US tech services firm Cognizant has said it will rely on a start-up style culture and internal training regime to try and compete with local unicorns and big companies in hiring 1000 highly prized tech specialists this year.

The company, which helps implement large IT projects for clients such as Telstra and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group locally, already has a team of 2100 employees based in Australia and New Zealand, but its local chief executive Jane Livesey said it needed to hire aggressively to meet the “exponential demand” for technology services.