A Guide to Future Careers ?? for Engineers in India ????

India churns out 15 lac engineers every year. IT services is the single biggest employer with ~2 lac hires with average salaries in the 3-5 lacs per annum range (Source: ET) . The surprising fact is that fresher salaries in these IT behemoths are largely the same as they were in 2010 (Source: The Ken).

Why do graduating engineers continue to choose these jobs when thousands of higher paying, faster growth jobs lie vacant in alternate careers of the future. ??

The reason is simple - Awareness and Skills. Most of them are unaware that they are eligible for careers outside of coding and maybe data science. Today, with the right skills, there are careers in digital marketing, eCommerce and analytics which the graduating engineers have access to. These jobs require a strong quantitative foundation, problem solving skills and rigour which the engineers are trained well on. ????

So as 15 lac engineers graduate and enter the workforce in the coming days, I thought it will be appropriate to put out some information on these careers and the skills needed for them.

Digital Marketing | Avg Salary (Starting & 2 yrs exp = 4.5 lpa and 7 lpa)*

Digital media accounts for over 30% of India’s ~75,000 crs of ad spends. This is likely to cross television as the largest medium in the country in the coming couple of years. This increase in spends is accompanied by an increase in jobs in the industry.

One of the key jobs is Performance Marketing which is essentially responsible for deploying this media money on key formats (video, social, eCommerce) and platforms (Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon etc) to help marketers achieve their business objectives. The Performance Marketer needs to understand the platform advertising tools along with the underlying algorithm to make everyday decisions on bidding, buying, budgeting and optimisation.

This requires a good quantitative base along with an intuitive sense of responding to numerical information on an everyday basis. Engineers possess both of these. However, what they do not understand is the whole context of digital media and the operations involved which can be picked up as supplementary skills. India is also emerging as an offshore location for these jobs because of the high cost of these experts locally in the US and Europe.

There are a whole host of other digital marketing roles too which collectively put out the millions of pieces of stimulus that we are exposed to on our digital devices. As per Naukri, there are over 150,000 digital marketing vacancies in India. ??

eCommerce Operations | Avg Salary (Starting & 2 yrs exp = 5 lpa and 7.5 lpa)*

In all probability, the device that you are reading this on has been bought from an eCommerce platform (Amazon, Flipkart, Tata Cliq etc). These are all operated through a network of interconnected systems and workflows which are built and operated by engineers. This ranges from forecasting for demand, planning for supply, producing or procuring the goods, determining the price for selling the goods, planning logistics etc. All of these operations require working and making decisions basis data to help achieve an objective.

Supplementing the core engineering training with the right skills can help open up these jobs and careers for thousands of graduating engineers. The future prospects can be gauged by the fact that eCommerce market in India is expected to grow to 4X in the next 10 years. ??

Business/ Data/ Finance/ Credit/ Risk/ Process Analysts | Avg Salary (Starting & 2 yrs exp = 5.5 lpa and 8.5 lpa)*

All of these transactions happening on digital means more and more bits of data being generated. This data requires the right handling, structuring and analysis for it to be meaningfully used for improving efficiency and output. All business processes and teams need a team of analysts working alongside to help churn this data and help with business decision making. As digital transactions (media, commerce, payments and business operations) increase, so will the need for Analysts for Data, Business, Finance and Processes.

Very often these skills are confused for proficiency in MS Excel, Power BI, SQL, Python etc. These are necessary but not sufficient conditions for being a good Analyst. The key role of an Analyst is to help dissect and unpeel a business need or problem. This requires marrying business context, quantitative mental models and proficiency on these tech tools. So while AI and Big Data Analytics will continue to be highly specialised sectors with very specific and extensive training needs, engineers can upskill themselves with the right tools and systems to enter the workforce in Analyst roles across digital businesses.

The Skills Gap to Bridge

The key gap that needs to be bridged is skills. While an engineering degree teaches the core skills, the curriculum has not kept pace with industry needs. So while these skills are not rocket science, there is a lack of effective and credible skilling systems and institutes that can help upskill engineers to open up career opportunities in these future fields.

There is a lot of great work happening to address this gap with some high quality upskilling institutes coming up to address this gap. One such eLearning institute is Digiaccel Learning which the bunch of us have setup to help upskill and enable better outcomes for white collar careers.

It has never been a more exciting time to be an engineer. With awareness and access to new age skills, the Indian engineers have a world of career possibilities as they start their careers and enter the workforce. ??

* All salary benchmarks are estimates.