Chartered Accountant Jobs in India: Roles, Salary Data and Where to Apply

Where chartered accountants work

ICAI's Avenues for CA page describes two broad routes after qualifying:

• Practice. You offer services to clients on your own or in a firm. ICAI lists audit and assurance, financial reporting, forensic accounting, taxation (income tax, GST and international tax), insolvency, corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, and management consultancy among them.
• Employment in trade and industry. You join the accounts, finance or tax department of a business and can rise to roles such as chief financial officer (CFO), chief operating officer or CEO. Work ranges from budgeting and capital planning to regulatory compliance and feasibility studies.

ICAI also points to openings abroad, saying multinationals and knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) firms value Indian CAs for their knowledge of IFRS and international taxation.

ICAI's campus data show which employers are hiring. At the December 2025–January 2026 campus placements, the ten leading sectors were banking and financial services, consulting, IT services and consulting, financial services, infrastructure-energy-logistics conglomerates, audit firms, metals and mining, oil-gas-retail-telecom conglomerates, pharmaceuticals, and power and energy (ICAI career counselling: Placement).

Practice or a job: the membership steps

Passing the CA Final exam does not make you a chartered accountant on its own. According to ICAI's FAQs on member services (updated 26 May 2026):

• You apply for associate membership (Form 2) after passing both groups of the Final exam and completing articleship, the Advanced ICITSS course and its online test, and the Self-Paced Online Modules test. The fee is ₹4,130 without a Certificate of Practice or ₹7,670 with one.
• To practise, you need a Certificate of Practice (Form 6, ₹3,540 for an associate member). A member in full-time employment, including a paid assistant in a CA firm, gets a part-time certificate. A member who is not employed anywhere gets a full-time one.

Chartered accountant job roles

Typical roles, grouped by the areas ICAI lists for practice and industry:

CA salary: what ICAI's campus figures show

ICAI publishes results for its campus placement programmes, which cover newly qualified CAs only:

These are offers made through ICAI's programme. They are not an average for all chartered accountants, whose pay depends on experience, employer, city and role. We have not quoted figures from salary websites because they are not official.

Top employers and sectors hiring CAs

People often search for the "top 50 CA firms in India", but we know of no official ICAI ranking of firms or employers. More reliable pointers are:

• the sector list from ICAI's latest campus placements (above);
• the participating organisations for each campus programme, which ICAI posts on its placement portal. Shortlisted candidates also see each company's presentation, with the job profile, place of posting and CTC;
• the employer's own careers page, which shows current openings.

How to find chartered accountant jobs

ICAI's campus placement programme

The ICAI Placement Directorate runs campus placement programmes for newly qualified CAs at centres across India. For the August–September 2026 programme (the 65th), ICAI's FAQs set these steps and rules:

1. Check eligibility. May 2026 pass-outs had to have passed both groups of the CA Final and complete articleship by 31 October 2026. Some January 2026 pass-outs who missed the previous drive could also register.
2. Register on ICAI's placement portal and submit the undertaking in the candidate login.
3. Pay ₹1,500 (inclusive of taxes) online to get your centre code.
4. Companies shortlist candidates in up to two rounds. Each company can shortlist at most 10 times the number of vacancies it declares, and you give your consent online to the companies that shortlist you.
5. Attend the interviews you consented to. Once you accept an offer, you cannot attend further interviews.

If you are under 21 and cannot yet become an ICAI member, you need special permission from ICAI (by email to cajob@icai.in) to attend. If you were eligible but did not register, you can join a later programme. Read the announcement for your programme, because cut-off dates change each time.

ICAI's other placement routes

ICAI's Placement Directorate also runs the CA Jobs Portal for hiring throughout the year, lateral and senior placements for experienced members (including its Career Ascent programmes), placements for women members, overseas placement initiatives and a CA Career Catalyst Programme. Details and dates are on the Placement Directorate's website.

General job sites

Job sites such as Naukri.com, LinkedIn and Indeed also carry CA openings. Keep a separate CV for each type of role (audit, tax, industry), fill in your profile completely, and check the careers pages of employers you want to work for.

If you are still a CA student

Before you qualify, the practical work is articleship. Under ICAI's current scheme it lasts 2 years, starts only after you pass both Intermediate groups and the four-week ICITSS, and can include 9–12 months of industrial training in its last part (ICAI FAQs, Q5.1–5.3). Our guide to CA articleship and industrial training explains how to choose a firm, and how long the CA course takes sets out the minimum time to qualify.

Things to consider while choosing a company

In our experience, salary is only one part of a good first job. Check these too:

• Profile. The work you do in your first years shapes your specialisation, so choose the area (audit, tax, reporting, finance) you want to build on.
• Learning and growth. Ask how the team trains new CAs, how often roles change and what the promotion path looks like.
• Salary and benefits. Compare the full CTC, the take-home pay and the variable part, not just the headline figure.
• Location. Check the place of posting and whether the role needs travel or relocation.
• Work culture. Talk to current or former employees and read employee reviews before you accept.

For the company secretary and cost accountant careers, see our guides to company secretary jobs and CMA job opportunities.