Engineering now and for the Future

Traditionally engineers in the early century and till the late 1970s have been primarily focusing on careers in the core engineering field. However, with the advent of new economy and liberalization in the 1980s we saw a shift towards business management which offered better careers, fat pay-checks and more importantly, global exposure resulting in leadership roles in global organisations. Today the career opportunities are fairly different and evolving.

Nothing can be more relevant than the prophecy of Alvin Toffler in his book, 'The Future Shock', in 1970, where he described the illiterates of the future way back then – He articulated that the illiterates of the future will not be the ones who are unable to read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn. We are now witnessing how skills and competence are constantly undergoing changes necessitated by disruptions and innovations. New jobs are emerging that are warranting new skills.

Therefore it comes as no surprise that we are training students for jobs that do not exist today and the ability to adapt, unlearn and relearn is crucial to prolong employability for the future. Those already employed will need to be mentally and emotionally resilient to undertake the re-skilling journey multiple times to remain employable.

Disruptions of various kinds, technological innovations, climate change and sustainability, coupled with the emergence of new economic landscapes like blue economy and startups, besides others, are the new job creators and shall continue to be so. The world is thus experiencing an emergence of a new financial order which is influencing a shift - from profits to investors to more on inclusivity of all the stake holders. Moreover, concern for the environment and the society along with transparency, regulatory compliances and fair distribution of wealth are at the core of all strategic intent.

Traditionally engineers in the early century and till the late 1970s have been primarily focusing on careers in the core engineering field. However, with the advent of new economy and liberalization in the 1980s we saw a shift towards business management which offered better careers, fat pay-checks and more importantly, global exposure resulting in leadership roles in global organisations. India with IITs, NITs and IIMs enabled high-end resources feeding global talent across multiple geographies. As articulated earlier, the emergence of new opportunities is witnessing an interesting shift primarily in three areas – protecting the planet, disruptions arising out of technological innovations / fury of the nature and lastly, the emergence of untapped opportunities.

Engineers in particular shall be having an advantage to fit into most of the roles and build their careers in the following five emerging opportunities:

1 Robotic Experts: Knowledge, academic pursuits and research in this field is leapfrogging with increasing use of robots in different fields. This will be an industry that is expected to flourish providing job opportunities not only for high-end engineers but also for technical support specialists in the hardware and downstream jobs that will be necessary in building the needed ecosystem.

2 Experts in devising risk-free investment instruments (Actuarial): With the advent of AI and Machine Learning, the basics of actuarial works are undergoing transition. The skills of actuarial experts will be to use the AI and ML for data crunching to speed up the decision-making process. The insurance industry will be looking for such experts to augment business decisions.

3 Specialist to handle/ avert cybercrimes: Hacking and cyber crimes, amongst other frauds, are increasingly in play requiring increasing demand for specialists in ensuring safety of software and network security processes and systems. This is another area for engineers to explore.

4 Drone operators/ traffic regulators: With exponential growth in this space the need for experts / specialists to manage drone operations will grow. Managing low-altitude flying in order to enable safe visual and beyond visual in the airspace will be complex and will require highly qualified resources in this space.

5 Specialists in the sustainability and green-energy space: With the growing concern for planet earth necessitated primarily due to climate change, carbon emissions and deforestation propelling the need for qualified resources to work in this space is witnessing an unexpected spurt. Waste management expertise will emerge as one of the jobs that are bound to attract students / resources having passion for resurrecting the environmental imbalance that got created over the years.

The above five jobs are by no means exhaustive as there are other opportunities that one can look at for a career. However, one has to be realistic that the jobs of tomorrow will come with a limited shelf life and therefore the need for continuous course correction to fit into the emerging opportunities will be paramount.

Other few jobs worth evaluating for a career are as under:

6 Full Stack Developers : Developing software for both client and server will grow exponentially providing great career options.

7 Natural Calamity Predictors – Tsunami, earthquakes - though immature at this stage, the advancements in technology in the seismic space have the potential to provide real-time warnings sooner than later. And needless to say this is a space for engineers to be absorbed in.

8 Digital twins' specialists – This is all about cloning the original so as to manage from a remote/distance perspective.

9 Back-end developers: Building codes and applications primarily to communicate with one another can be done remotely. Though invisible, they play an important role in managing websites, database and servers. With IoT on the rise, the need for such skills and resources is bound to multiply.

10 Digital currency experts / specialists: The world is in the era of digital and cryptocurrency and India is in the cusp of launching digital currency in 2023. Specialists in stock trading, exchanges, cryptocurrency for investigations, besides numerous other jobs in this space, are expected to grow exponentially.

11 AI-enabled marketing specialists: Digital marketing is in a never-ending evolution stage and will continue to be one of the most sought-after jobs. A career in digital marketing provides both – jobs as well as learning at the same time.

12 Underwater Exploration Specialists: Welding, tourism, drones. The blue-ocean economy is expected to double from 2.5 trillion USD by 2030, thereby opening up jobs from 350 million to over 700 million by then.

While careers warranting new skills and competencies will be on the rise and replacing some traditional jobs, it is also imperative that the fields of marketing, finance, HR, operations and IT embrace new-age technology in their curriculum so as to keep pace with the needs of the present-day economy. Institutes will therefore have to play a constructive role in feeding industry-ready talents on real-time basis

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