We report the pulsed laser deposited titanium oxide thin film for H₂S gas sensing. The surface and bulk electronic structure is revealed using XPS technique. These TiO₂ films showed very good selectivity to H₂S with response of around _~60% at 200^oC operating temperature. In order to improve the sensor response so as to realize the technological application, we hereby attempted bi-directional efforts as (i) Nb-doping and (ii) defects engineering in the TiO₂ film. It is revealed that Nb-doping reduces response however defect engineering improves the same.