As many students come near the end of their respective bootcamp programs they often wonder what is going to happen know in terms of the job search. I have often heard people in the field state “there are many areas you can go into!” Well that is great news, however, I really don’t know what the areas are, so I decided to take a closer look at what those options are today. Turns out there is a lot so I decided to look at just a few that are both on software engineer jobs and alternative ones as well.
In my research I found that the current open roles in Software development are experiencing record growth at 22% through 2029 which is much faster than the job growth from other sectors in the United States. Additionally, that salaries in this field remain competitive which translate to an increase in salaries from 2017.
So without further ado lets take a look at 10 career paths that coding bootcamp graduates can get into below:
1. Backend Developer
Backend developers focus on databases, scripting, and the architecture of websites. Code written by back-end developers helps to communicate the database information to the browser. These developers work with server — side languages like java, ruby, python, etc. and should also have knowledge in, database and each, server and API (REST & SOAP)
2. Frontend Developer
Frontend developers focuses on the look and feel of the site, along with its functionality. The standard skill set for this kind of developer include HTML, CSS, Javascript although now-a-days many use UI frameworks like React, Vue, and Angular, web framework like Gatsby, compilers like Babel, bundlers like Webpack, and CSS tools like Sass
3. Full-stack Developer
The Full-stack developer has a combined skill set of both the Backend and Frontend developer as they create applications from top to bottom and everything in between. So the developer should have knowledge of server, network, hosting environment, data modeling, business logic, API layer, action layer, MVC, UI and UX
4. Robotics Engineer
A Robotic engineer is a behind-the-scenes designer, who is responsible for creating robots and robotic systems that are able to perform duties that humans are either unable to complete. Through their creations, a robotics engineer helps to make jobs safer, easier, and more efficient, particularly in the manufacturing industry.
5. Experience Developer
Experience developers work with design, outcomes and enablement. This means that developers in this field develop small-scale experience prototypes, mostly in the web, do research which entails reading about and field testing software or conducting focus groups to gain more detailed information about the experiences from customers, employees, and partners.
6. Machine Learning Engineer
Artificial intelligence is the goal of a Machine Learning (ML) engineer. They are programers who work with data scientists, computer engineers and developers to create programs that allow machines to function without direct human assistance. Their main duties are to creates models that ensure ML programs work as expected, and develop AI algorithms for social media, online stores, Internet of Things (IoT) products and self-driving car. So these engineers should have strong proficiency in data science, statistics and software engineering.
7. Security Engineer
Security engineering focuses on designing computer systems that can deal with disruptions such as natural disasters or malicious cyber attacks. They analyze computer networks to make sure they are running as the should, securely and is proactive in deterring future security issues.
8. Gaming Engineer
A Gaming engineer helps with a variety of tasks from design to functionality of a video game. They also create the basic software that runs the program as well. Gaming engineers work with artificial intelligence, AV/VR, 2D/3D animations along with various programming languages Javascript, C++ with DirectX.
9. AR/VR Engineer
AR/VR engineers use both Augmented reality (AR) — a way to insert computer generated objects into a real world environment using overlays, 3D animations, audio, etc, and Virtual reality (VR) — uses computer technology to create a world that users can interact with — to create environments that look real to the user. These applications are built with a skills that include 3D development, software design and programming languages such as C++. Engineers working on AR and VR will often collaborate across scientific and engineering disciplines.
AV/VR is not just for games any more as businesses like “Spheora” and “Wayfair” and implementing this tech in their applications
10. Mobile Engineer
As a Mobile Engineer the main responsibilities is to create software for mobile devices. Engineers in this field must know the developmental environment and programming languages for their chosen platform. Some of the languages need are Corona, Python, PHP, Swift, QML, Java, Java for mobile, Objective-C, BuildFire.js, HTML5 and C#
11. Embedded Engineer
Embedded software is the first layer of code that runs on a device. Embedded engineers need to fully understand the hardware it runs on. They understand the schematics of hardware and how chip data-sheets relate to the code written for them. Embedded software is usually self-contained and only runs a single program. Therefore, these engineers can determine the smallest possible number of drivers that a given device needs to run the software.
Alternative Career Paths
In addition to the traditional types of careers a software engineer can take there are also career options that don’t necessarily require writing code that are equally viable choices. Below is a listed 10 of these kinds of options:
1. Technical Writer
If you can take in complex information and/or ideas and break it down into language that is easy to understand for a non-technical person, consider technical writing. Documentation (docs) writing consist of developing internal or external docs or creating manuals for products. Besides docs writing , you can pursue copywriting or technical blogging or make demo apps and tutorials. With technical blogging which as become popular in react years is a great way to make a lucrative living for writers.
2. Teach
With teaching you should have a solid understanding of the fundamentals of a coding language(s) and some experience in the field ideally but it is not always necessary. You also need to be able to reach your audience at their level and create an environment that facilitates trust. You could teach at a coding bootcamp, college or high school. There is also the option of joining learning platforms where you create learning tutorials, such as egghead.io, or do your own course website through Teachable or Educative. The path you take depends on your background and risk tolerance.
3. Trainer
Trainer generally have strong technical knowledge and like a Teacher should be a good communicator so if the idea of presenting technical concepts on a stage sounds exciting this is a good path for you. As a Trainer one can work as an independent consultant or work at a large company to deliver hands-on training for specialized software.
4. Data Engineer
The Data Engineer work with large data sets that help mainly businesses gain insight on how to better serve their clients/customer thus, leading to better decisions. Data engineers focus on the data ingestion (the data from databases and text files of a company) and organize pipelines (the transformed data) so that data scientists can design experiments and algorithms that crunch this data into useful results. AI, Machine Learning, etc. (also known as Data Science) is a huge field with roots in math, software engineering, and statistics.
5. Security Analyst
Security Analysts main responsibilities is to find, catalog, and provide suggestions on how to fix issues. This role requires a mix of technical, compliance, business and risk assessment
6. Research and Development
Working in Research and Development (R&D) for someone with software engineering skills could prove to be an exciting and interesting experience. The main role here is innovate and introduce new products/services or improve existing services so the company can get an edge on competitors.
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 throwing in some creative thinking.
7. Site Reliability Engineer
Here the main responsibilities are responding to critical issues that come up in production and fix them. You will solve a wide range of problems, build automated alerts, and read server logs.
8. Startup
Startups are types of businesses that are owned by an individual or partners like a co-founder(s). These companies are in the early stages and of need revenue to cover the cost of operation which they usually don’t have enough of so need loans and/or investors from family, friends, crowdfunding, etc. That said, if you want to build your own software business, the sky’s the limit. If you can find one or two other founders to share the load with, that may increase your chance of success.
9. Freelance
Since the use of software is virtually everywhere there is a high demand for software engineers. Freelance software engineer usually conceive, test, maintain, and even enable provisions for updates and innovations in Software. There are a number of things that can be done as a freelancer such as, design, develop, modify software systems, using scientific analysis and mathematical models to predict and measure outcome and consequences of design. The caveat here is building a cliental that will support your efforts and give positive feedback on your work. So starting out is slow and takes time for most people.
10. Technical Support
Software companies need people that can work with their client and customer base to help them resolve technical issues as the role implies. Because you have experience with coding this makes you an ideal candidate because in besides fielding the technical issues you can also provide suggestions and have a solid understanding of the software works.
Conclusion
After my research I was happy to learn that there are indeed many options in the software engineer space. As most industries are becoming technological there is a high demand for software engineers. A languages like Javascript is in very high demand as there are billions of companies all around the world that want interactive applications on various platforms and there are only a few million software engineers that specialize in Javascript.
So the take away here is that software engineers are in demand and will be in demand for many years to come. And as technology continues to change and you stay on top of updating your skills you will do well now and in the future.
Resources:
Nucamp Blog: Getting A Job After A Coding Bootcamp — The Full Story
Nucamp Blog: Getting A Job After A Coding Bootcamp — The Full Story
