In today’s digitalized world, software IT jobs are becoming increasingly important in non IT industries. With technology playing an ever-larger role in a variety of sectors, the demand for skilled professionals who can bridge the gap between non-IT and IT functions is growing rapidly. Using Automation, many companies are on the look out for IT Skills to Automate Business and Process. This blog post will explore the opportunities available to those interested in moving from non-IT to IT jobs. Software jobs in the Non-IT industry lead to the question:
‘What Else Can Software Developers Do?’
The list is surprisingly long.
This article will go through many of the career paths available to software developers, especially recent Bootcamp graduates.
Whether one is looking for an alternate career path because they haven’t found a job as an engineer or because realized software development wasn’t for them, this guide will help them find a career fit for their skillset.
In this article, we listed the top software jobs in the non-IT industry in India, along with the roles and responsibilities for software developers.
This list is updated and irrespective of your work level, beginner/entry-level or middle level, these will help you decide the direction you want to go in next. There is a rising demand for professionals in areas like marketing, product design, and management.
1. Developer Relations, Advocacy, or Evangelism
Developer relations professionals (some companies call them developer advocates, developer evangelists, community managers, or “DevRels”) help establish and build a community around their company’s software.
They are often involved in creating demo applications, writing blog posts, speaking at conferences, and managing social media accounts for tech-focused companies. Many of the big-name tech companies (Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc.) hire teams of developer relations professionals.
The world of technology is constantly evolving, and with that comes a growing need for individuals who can bridge the gap between IT professionals and those who lack technical expertise. Enter developer relations, advocacy, and evangelism – three roles that have become increasingly important in today’s tech industry. Any Non IT to IT shift can happen with this role. Understanding the product, development cycle is critical to succeed in this role.
Developer relations involves working closely with software developers to ensure their needs are met when it comes to tools, resources, and support. Advocacy focuses on promoting a company’s products or services through various channels, such as social media or events. Evangelism takes this a step further by building strong relationships with customers and communities to create loyal brand ambassadors.
What makes these roles particularly appealing is that they are accessible to anyone – regardless of whether or not they have an IT background. In fact, many companies actively seek out candidates from non-IT backgrounds because they bring unique perspectives and skills to the table.
2. Developer Marketing
Marketing to developers is especially tricky because we don’t like to be sold, so many of the more aggressive marketing tactics that work for other markets are taboo here. As a person with a technical background, you’ll naturally understand the way developers think, and you’ll have more clout than a traditional marketer might.
SlashData puts out a lot of great content about Developer Marketing, including a book on the topic in 2018. If you’d like to get started in this field, learn online marketing: SEO, social media, content marketing, influencer marketing, etc. You can practice many of these skills on your blog to demonstrate your knowledge before applying to jobs.
3. Sales Engineer
Many engineers are turned off by any job with “sales” in the title, but that’s just because we’ve all encountered bad salespeople.
The truth is that everyone is in sales. Whether you’re “selling” yourself as a job candidate during the interview process or advocating for a new framework on your engineering team, sales mean matching a customer’s needs with the right solution.
Sales engineers are unique in that they have some level of technical expertise. This can be an excellent match for developers who don’t want to write code all day but understand software engineering jobs.
The traditional career path for sales engineers involves starting in an engineering role and then transitioning into a sales position. However, with the rapid expansion of technology, more professionals from non IT to IT migration is happening. The job of a sales engineer is to sell complex technical solutions to customers and clients.
To become a successful sales engineer, candidates need good communication skills along with excellent technical knowledge. They must be able to explain complicated concepts clearly and concisely, while also being able to establish customer trust by demonstrating their expertise in a particular field. Sales engineers must also have strong problem-solving abilities – they need to be able to identify customer needs and provide solutions that meet those needs.
Making the transition from non IT roles requires some additional training and education, but it can lead to exciting opportunities within the tech industry.
4. Technical Recruiter
Another profession that gets a bad rap among software engineers is technical recruiting.
The good news is that with a background in software development jobs, you’ll have more empathy and credibility than many other technical recruiters out there. Like sales, this field requires a more outgoing, relationship-focused personality, but it doesn’t require specialized certifications or courses.
5. Quality Assurance or Test Engineer
While there are subtle differences between quality assurance and test engineers, both deal with testing software jobs before it goes live.
If you have an eye for detail and you like coming up with creative ways to automate repetitive tasks, this could be a great career path. It will likely require some coding as well as some manual testing work.
Smaller companies have their software engineers test each other’s code, so dedicated test and QA roles are most common in large organizations. There is a lot of variance between how companies do testing, so be sure to ask about the tools they use, how automated their tests are, and how much your role will entail manual vs. automated tests.
6. Business Analyst
A business analyst assesses the processes, systems, and business model to find out about the organization’s technology integration. This occupation is concerned with devising the best solutions that fit the business need in terms of technology and talent investments.
Responsibilities:
- To identify sales trends
- To analyze competition in the market
- To interact with customers and clients
- To form a thorough understanding of user needs and preferences
- To provide personalized service
- To drive operational efficiency for higher performance and revenue
The average business analyst’s salary in India is ₹607,209.
7. Project Manager
Like business analysts, project managers must understand their product’s business requirements and technical constraints.
The key difference is that project managers typically go deep into a single project. They often define tasks and resources for the teams working on the project and track the project’s progress as it nears release.
Excellent organization skills, understanding of the business, and people skills are critical to succeed as a project manager. This role hinges on your ability to manage expectations and motivate people who might be more senior or experienced than you, so you have to build trust quickly. This role’s multifaceted nature makes it a good fit for analytical, technical people who don’t want to write code anymore.
8. Scrum Master
In Agile teams, the Scrum Master helps make sure everyone knows and buys into Scrum theory, best practices, and rules.
The ability to manage expectations and limitations is critical to your success as a Scrum Master. You’ll also need to know Agile best practices, so I’d recommend finding a suitable course or book on the topic. Agile has seen widespread adoption at organizations of all sizes, so this career path is likely to continue growing in the coming decade.
Scrum Master is a highly sought-after role within the IT industry. With the growing demand for skilled professionals in this field, many non-IT professionals are considering a career change to become Scrum Masters. For those who are unfamiliar with this role, a Scrum Master is responsible for facilitating team meetings and ensuring that projects adhere to agile methodologies.
One of the benefits of transitioning from non IT to an IT job as a Scrum Master is that it is one of the few roles where prior technical experience is not required. Instead, individuals with strong communication skills, problem-solving abilities and leadership qualities can excel in this role. Additionally, becoming certified as a Scrum Master can be done relatively quickly compared to other IT certifications.
Furthermore, making the switch to becoming a Scrum Master can lead to lucrative salaries and career growth opportunities.
9. Designer
If you come from a design or artistic background, becoming a UI or UX designer with some coding chops is a great way to stand out in your field. This combination of skills will allow you to speak more effectively with engineers and create interactive mockups in HTML/CSS rather than just static image files.
If you don’t have much experience in design, take a course, and start building a portfolio. Many companies will hire people without a degree if they can showcase their knowledge and skills. Dribbble is the most common portfolio platform I’ve seen, but you can also use your own website.
Graphic Designer
Graphic design is a creative career option that is open to individuals from non-tech disciplines as well. It combines text, images, and visual concepts to communicate ideas and appeal to the target audience.
Responsibilities:
- To develop the overall layouts and templates of communication and outreach materials
- To design and produce advertisements, corporate reports, brochures, magazines, etc.
The average graphic designer’s salary in India is ₹299,417.
10. Product Manager
The product manager is a coveted position that deals with handholding the product offerings of tech and non-tech companies right from concepts to the launch. Product managers need to be proficient in working with cross-functional teams and effectively communicating the directions.
Responsibilities:
- Develop product development strategies
- Set the roadmap for products and product lines
- Specify functional requirements and features
- Guide the product throughout its lifecycle
The average product manager salary in India is ₹1,677,971.
11. No or Low-Code Developer
The explosion of no-code and low-code development tools in the past few years has opened up opportunities for companies that want to quickly build software without hiring a development team. These tools allow you to create a mobile or web app in hours instead of weeks, and because they are getting better every year, more companies are embracing no-code apps.
Makerpad and No Code Jobs are good places to start looking for these kinds of jobs. Because this is a new field, you’ll find a wide range of required skills and payscales, but your background in writing code will undoubtedly prove to be an asset.
12. Sysadmin or DevOps Engineer
Large software jobs companies have hundreds or thousands of servers that need to be patched, upgraded, and rotated throughout the year. While the widespread adoption of cloud computing has changed this job from physically plugging in servers to working with software like Terraform and Kubernetes, there’s no shortage of jobs in this field.
Traditionally, System Administrators have been responsible for maintaining and administering servers as needed by the engineering teams. As organizations have grown and moved to cloud hosting, many have adopted the title DevOps engineer to reflect the increased automation being used in this process.
Either way, you’ll need a basic understanding of operating systems, hosting platforms, automation tools, bash scripting, and system architecture. It can be hard to find entry-level jobs in this field because it requires such a wide array of technical knowledge, but it’s a great role to transition into if you like the problem-solving aspects of engineering without the UI/UX requirements that most customer-facing products require.
13. Database Administrator
Database administrators deal with the security, provisioning, scaling, and optimization of low-level data storage systems. You’ll need a knowledge of SQL and NoSQL databases, security best practices, and some basic scripting skills, but you won’t likely be writing code all day. You’ll also get to worry about really minute optimization problems like fixing indexes and caches.
If you’re new to software development jobs, start by learning everything you can about databases. You’ll need to know which database is right for which application and how to optimize each of them at scale, so it can be hard to practice this on your own. If you want to find some large datasets to work with, check out Kaggle.
In today’s fast-paced world, the boundaries between industries are becoming increasingly blurred. With technological advances and the growing emphasis on data-driven decision-making, many professionals are now transitioning from non IT backgrounds to IT jobs. One such job is that of a database administrator.
A database administrator is responsible for managing and maintaining an organization’s data infrastructure. They ensure that databases are secure, structured, and efficient in order to support business operations effectively. Additionally, they work closely with other IT professionals and stakeholders to develop strategies for optimizing database performance and ensuring data integrity.
Transitioning from a non IT background to a career as a database administrator requires specific technical skills in areas such as SQL, scripting languages like Python or Perl, and knowledge of cloud-based platforms like AWS or Azure.
14. R&D
Working in research and development can be a unique experience for someone with software engineering jobs skills. Large companies like Google and Amazon devote a portion of their profits to high-risk, potentially high-reward experiments carried out by research and development teams. These cross-disciplinary teams may include software jobs developers, data scientists, business analysts, and project managers.
Getting into a good R&D team is hard. These roles tend to be competitive and require highly specialized knowledge about topics that you likely won’t learn in a coding Bootcamp. That said, some companies hire ethical hackers, founders, or polyglots to help round out the team and throw some creative thinking into the mix.
15. Freelancer or Consultant
One way to capture more freedom is to leave your 9-5 job and become a freelancer. Freelancing as a software developer, you will hire yourself out to one or more clients who will pay you by the hour to write code for them. Companies often hire freelancers to work on specific short-term projects, clean up technical debt, or fill in gaps when an employee takes a break.
Consultants are higher-end freelancing software developers who solve specific problems for their clients. While they may write code, they’re often brought in because of their expertise or unique background. The line between freelancers and consultants is pretty blurry, so don’t get caught up too much in the semantics.
Why Non IT To IT Interview Questions?
Are you a fresher looking to switch from a non-IT to IT industry? Congratulations, you’ve made a smart move! The IT industry is booming and offers endless opportunities for growth and development. However, before you start applying for IT jobs, it’s important to understand why interview questions for non-IT to IT candidates are different from those for pure IT candidates.
Firstly, as someone who is transitioning from a non-IT background, you may not have the technical skills that an experienced IT professional does. As such, companies may focus on assessing your soft skills such as communication abilities, problem-solving approaches and critical thinking ability. They will want to see if you possess these qualities because they are essential in today’s fast-paced work environment. Secondly, companies will also be interested in your motivation behind wanting to transition into the IT field.
