How to Develop Your Software Engineering Career

Guest post: Vaishnavi Agrawal

In today’s world software is omnipresent, putting everything in motion – be it cars, phones or the machines we use in our daily life. We can’t hide from the fact that software is everywhere! In the past few decades software engineering careers have emerged as some of the most lucrative and in-demand sectors.

But, once you graduate in software engineering, you can’t just stay still. You need to keep on top of new developments in the field, and keep growing your skillset. Here’s how to continue developing your software engineering career…

1. Grow your expertise

As we cruise through time, software engineering careers risk losing their longevity. What’s new? What’s next? A software engineer can’t just be a software engineer anymore. S/he needs to specialize and stay up to date with the variety of demands from a fast-growing market. As these technologies get outdated within a few years, a software engineer may find it’s necessary to specialize in a whole new skill.

There are certain basic skills, called the fundamentals, which a software engineer always needs. These include knowledge of data structures, computer science fundamentals, operating system design, algorithms, compilers, networking, databases and prioritization.

Besides the traditional fundamentals the software engineer of today also needs certain specialized skills: 

• Machine learning
• Computer vision
• Mobile development or distributed systems
• Robotics
• Sensors and artificial intelligence

2. Be prepared to work in new ways

Software engineering careers are growing beyond the traditional workplace. A growing number of people are picking up software engineering as a hobby, due to the widespread availability of internet, and many are able to do professional quality software engineering from home. As a plus point, the rise of open source software is fueling innovation. Platforms such as GitHub and SourceForge assist people to share their work and let others benefit from its use. This new trend has not only facilitated the creation of virtual organizations and the almost unlimited availability of information, but also has created a challenge to the traditional 9 to 5 office work approach.

3. Stay up to date with key trends 

Rapidly growing trends impacting on software engineering careers include rapid delivery, virtualization, mobile devices and cloud computing.

Rapid delivery

As the name suggests, this trend means providing rapid delivery of software to customers. The idea is that “the customer knows best” so they should be the ones to decide if they’re getting what they want, and this is facilitated by showing them the software at an earlier stage. This should mean there’s a closer match between the customer’s feedback and what actually gets built.

Virtualization

Like cloud computing, virtualization allows for the reduction of operating costs through the use of virtual platforms, resources, operating systems and networks. The growing use of server virtualization has also led to the growing popularity of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).

Mobile devices

Smart phones and tablets are the favorite toys of both businesses and consumers nowadays. These mobile devices are about to engulf more than one third of the PC market, and growth is still not slowing down. It’s only a matter of time before mobile internet usage overshadows desktop usage, and this will have a significant impact on software engineering careers.

Cloud computing

Cloud computing is a real lifesaver when it comes to cost savings. Instead of needing a lot of upfront cost, only a few clicks lead to the software being published to the cloud provider at a low cost. It can even scale software up or down as needed; it’s like an auto-tune for your software. In the cloud even the small enterprises can perform like the big sharks.

Are you ready for the challenge? 

The field of software has grown to cover even fields which in daily life are not considered to be related to software. Medical and surgical equipment, automobiles and home appliances are being developed to the levels of ‘artificial intelligence’. The scope of software engineering is expanding to meet client- or field-specific development and support. With ever-changing trends and the latest gizmos, there will always be a ‘what’s next?’ for a software engineer!

Vaishnavi Agrawal has a passion for technology and has successfully managed and run personal technology magazines and websites. She is currently working for Intellipaat. She is based in Bangalore and has five years’ experience in the field of content writing and blogging. Her work has been published on various sites related to Hadoop, big data, business intelligence, cloud computing, IT, SAP, project management and more.