Looking for a Career in the IT Field? Know which IT career is good for you

By Nida Sahar

IT jobs cover a broad spectrum of career opportunities. It is very lucrative to pursue a course to equip yourself as an IT professional, because of the high demand and attractive packages. But it is a good idea to explore the various career paths you can take in the field of Information Technology and the qualifications required before you venture out.

Engineering equips one to break down a complex problem into multiple steps and solve it. While engineering has many sub-fields or categories, Information Technology (IT) and Engineering are quite popular. There are multiple careers under IT. Here the crux or the end result is a solution or product. In order to develop a right solution there are different specialised roles.

Specializations in the IT field

Today different industries are dependent on IT. Every industry has special needs. An e-commerce site needs saleable products. A banking solution might need multiple levels of security. Hence, domain plays an important role to decide the technology that needs to be used. With emergence of technological advancement in the last few years, one can note the ascent of multiple languages, concepts and algorithms and the need to have certain experts to contribute on solving the problem.

A product company would deal with creating in-house products. A services company would create or provide expertise in terms of technology manpower to the client company.

Before choosing an IT career, one must understand the different contributing factors for the specialisation.

IT jobs roles are specific to:

• Domain – financial, cloud, network, e-commerce etc
• Technology – language, stack specialisation, OS, role etc
• Area – Product, Services

Different Roles in the IT Field

To understand the different roles in an organisation, one must look at the software development life cycle. In simple terms to make a product, you will gather the requirements, understand and evaluate the needs, create the product, validate it against the requirements and finally release it to the customer.

In every release of the product, new features, enhancements, or bug fixes are included. These releases are called as projects. In order to create a fully functional product, apart from engineers, a team in the engineering family would include managers, architects, user-experience designers, developers, testers and technical writers.

There are multiple roles that an IT engineer can perform. I can roughly categorise it into the following two:

Role of a Software Developer

A software developer basically creates the software using different languages, technologies and the business need. Based on the language used – Java, C, C++ etc or Operation mode – Application, Mobile or stack – frontend, backend, UI, database, firmware, middleware; the title of the role is given, example – Software engineering developer (Java).

Every developer needs to be well versed in Object Oriented Programming, algorithms and data structures. 

Role of a Tester

An application or a solution once built cannot be directly released to the market, it needs to undergo a certain amount of validation. The test engineer does this validation. Testing can be done manually or it can be automated. In either situation, a test engineer needs to have in-depth understanding of the industry.

While a developer uses coding to create a product, a test engineer codes to validate the test cases for the product. A test engineer can be titled based on the language – Python, Perl. or the mode of testing – manual, automated, Stake being tested – firmware, middleware, UI etc.

Role of an IT Architect

Architects are senior engineers that design platforms, softwares, products, solutions and choose the technologies that need to be used. Architects need to have in-depth understanding of the domain and are considered as experts in multiple aspects. They typically work closely on understanding requirements.

There are development architects as well as test architects.

Role of Technical Writers

A software product comes bundled with a set of technical documentation, white papers, installation, troubleshooting and user guides. Along with the developers and testers, a writer also works on a product release. It won't be wrong to say technical writers develop content hence some company title the role as Information Engineers.

Technical writers also edit, review and enhance existing content and work closely with the engineering team. They are also responsible for getting illustrations and screenshots in the documents.

Role of IT Managers

Managers take care of scheduling, resources and planning tasks within teams.

Technical Managers

A technical manager needs to have a mix of technical expertise and management skills. Technical Manager manages a team of people and the project. The tasks include planning, scheduling tasks, risk management, dependency management, hardware and software sourcing and requirement analysis. A technical manager ensures that projected is tracked to completion. He manages the engineering group and other dependent groups.

Product Managers

A Product Manager owns the product. The future requirements, the roadmap of the product, competitive analysis and release planning is done by a product manager. A product manager also interacts with engineering teams, field managers, sales, services and marketing teams to ensure that the product is placed, priced, packaged, planned and released properly.

Education/Background for Various IT Roles

Bachelor of Engineering (BE) in Information Science or Computer Science or Information Technology extends over a period of four academic years. Each academic year comprises of two semesters. Each semester comprises of 16 to 20 weeks of class/lab work.
The students are required to undergo industrial exposure to gain better access to industry exposure. The students can take up internship or they can work on research or open source projects.

Master of Engineering (MTech or MS) allows one to be specialised in a specific domain like networking, security etc. One could pursue Bachelor of Computer Application (BCA) which is 3-year long course, and then choose to do Master of Computer Application (MCA), which is 2-year long course and get into IT. Since some special roles require analytics and data analysis, specialisation in Mathematics – BSc or MSc in Mathematics or Statistics is desirable.

Education/Background for Technical Writers

Employers generally prefer a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism (BJ), Mass Communication(BMC) or Literature (BLit). Some institutes have two semesters per year, others have an annual exam. There are 3-year undergraduate degree courses and the duration can vary based on the specialisation.

One could also have a Masters in Journalism, communication or literature. You may need to have basic technical knowledge. Certifications on domain and technology could be advantageous.

Education/Background for IT Managers

To be a manager in engineering, people from engineering backgrounds are preferred. Apart from a technical degree, PMP (Project Management Program) certification or scrum certifications add value to one’s resume.

An MBA (Master of Business Administration) or equivalent degrees like PGP-DM (Post Graduation Program - Diploma in Management) in Information Technology or Consulting specialisation gives leverage. A seasoned engineer can also do an Executive MBA or a PGP-EM (Post Graduation Program - Executive Management) to take up management roles.

About the Author:

Nida Sahar

Nida Sahar wears many hats as a software engineer, poet, community manager and a mentor. Nida has over 9 years of experience in IT having worked for big brands like HP, Oracle and EMC2.