India's $60 billion IT outsourcing industry was built on a simple model: Rely on armies of cheap engineers in the South Asian country to be the help desk for the West. Now, though, Indian outsourcers are hiring thousands of expensive engineers and business development specialists in Silicon Valley and nationwide.

The shift in strategy reflects the growing complexity of outsourced work that now requires levels of expertise not widely found in India. It's getting harder to hire the best Indian engineers -- as competition grows from such U.S. giants as Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), IBM and Accenture, which have massive operations there -- and harder to move them overseas. With all that, the outsourcers are finding U.S. employees a much more attractive option.

It's also a good public relations strategy as high unemployment and anemic economic growth has led some politicians to take a dim view of these companies.

"The irony is IBM (and other tech companies) moved East and the Indian companies are moving West," said Vivek Wadhwa, a researcher on immigration and labor issues at UC Berkeley.

Surya Kant, president of Tata Consultancy Services' North American, United Kingdom and European operations, said his company is adding 1,200 people in the United States in fiscal 2012, which began in March. TCS, India's largest IT services company, has 2,100 U.S. employees now and an office in Santa Clara.

"Every year, we are hiring more" in the United States, he said.

Infosys Technologies, which has a large office in Fremont, said it plans to hire 250 Americans every quarter this year. Infosys and other Indian IT companies are setting up development centers in the United States, as well.

Wipro Technologies, whose U.S. headquarters is in Mountain View with more than 700 employees, expects to hire an additional 1,500 Americans this year, said Priti Rajora, vice president of talent acquisition. In all, the company has more than 8,500 workers based in the United States.

Though these companies still rely on cheaper engineering labor in India, they are beefing up their front-line ranks of U.S. workers.

"A few years ago, I didn't think I'd be in-sourced," said Michael Beese, an application architect who joined Tata Consultancy Services' Santa Clara office in February to build up a mobile applications team. Beese is now helping to recruit dozens of technologists. "We are making a full-court press here in Silicon Valley."

Roger Dorris, a Bay Area software developer, found himself working for an Indian company when KPIT Cummins -- which is based in Pune, India -- acquired his company, Sparta Consulting, in 2009. "We have an offshore team we work with on every project to mitigate costs," he said. "However, there is a large presence of Americans who are onshore."

As the level of sophistication of outsourced work increases, the traditional offshore contracting model needs to change, said outsourcing expert Michael Murphy, a partner with Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman in San Francisco.

"What works well in offshoring is highly commoditized routine work -- something that can be executed with a script," he said. "The closer you get to true knowledge work, where experience and judgment is required, the closer you need to be to (customers)."

The Indian companies are battling powerhouse U.S. tech companies on their own turf for business, said Vamsee Tirukkala, co-founder of Zinnov, a Silicon Valley outsourcing consultant. "So they have to hire the best talent."

It's also becoming tougher to bring overseas employees to the United States.

Last year, Congress hiked the cost for foreign worker visas -- called H-1B and L visas -- $2,000 each to more than $5,000 to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to help pay for increased security along the country's border with Mexico.

Also, the process of obtaining visas to bring overseas employees to the United States has become much more difficult, particularly after allegations made in a lawsuit by an employee of Infosys that the company used temporary business visas to circumvent the H-1B visa program, Tirukkala said. The suit has led to a federal investigation. Bangalore-based Infosys, considered a leading company in India in terms of corporate governance and transparency, denies the charges.

Kishor Patil, CEO of KPIT Cummins, which specializes in product engineering in industries such as semiconductor, automotive, energy and utilities, said his company has added about 400 employees in the United States in the past two years. He expects to add an additional 60 or so workers by the end of the year. "It's not as easy to bring people from outside into the United States" as it used to be, Patil said.

The hiring binge, though, has as much to do with the changing nature of outsourcing, which requires seasoned technologists.

Patil, whose company recently took a 50 percent stake in San Francisco-based Systime Solutions, which provides software consulting services, said his clients increasingly are looking for cutting-edge services and local talent.

"The area in which we are growing needs a lot of specialized knowledge," he said. "These are pretty significant assignments from the customers, very value-added, very transformational."

Indian companies also need business managers who understand the inner workings of different industries. "If I am trying to find a solution for a retail company, I must understand how retail is being conducted" in the United States, Kant said. "You need to know those nuances."

There was a time when Indian executives had a bias against potential U.S. employees because they thought they were less productive, Wadhwa said. But that has changed.

"They are realizing they can get a lot of value from American workers. I think they are delighted. In the next five years, you will see much more."