Automation is the new mantra that is stipulated to dictate the future of the IT industry in the coming years. Today, Automation engineers are in demand by both product and service companies. This is great news for fresh graduates looking forward to make their mark in the IT industry. As per experts, globally the automation industry is expected to grow by 6 - 8 percent and in countries like India and China at almost 30 percent.
As there is an increase in demand for productivity, process improvement and performance, companies will require more and more research and development in automation in the near future, making it very lucrative for the graduates to start exploring options in automation. A lot of fresh graduates today are extremely keen to work in automation, considering that it is the key to future but are equally unsure of what exactly are they stepping into and what prospects this hold for them.
The responsibilities of an automation engineer start with designing the process, followed by programming the design, simulating it, and then finally test the automated processes intended to complete defined task. So what are the career options and different job opportunities that automation actually offers?
Test Automation
With the Global Software Testing Industry business expected to reach 13 billion$, Test Automation is going to be the new big thing. It is believed that approximately half of this business would be outsourced to India, making it ideal for fresh graduates to consider this as a great way to inter the IT industry. To describe Test Automation, a tester has to authenticate the elements of the software by writing code that will automate the testing process. Not only is it extremely time effective but also cost-effective.
Build and Deployment Automation
With automation all set to impact the IT industries in a big way, professionals are needed to automate processes and two such processes are Build and Deployment. The practice of automating the construction of a software build and the related processes comprising-accumulating the source code in binary code and putting together the binary code in the server is called Build. Once software is ready, the next crucial step towards releasing it is deploying it and this is known as Deployment. Software is first deployed in various settings, it starts form development, then to Quality Assurance then to User Acceptable Testing and finally in real production settings.
Support Tasks
Imagine your first day at work in an organization. You go to a concerned person for the creation of your email-id, another person to get your ID-card issued and probably a third person to get access to your office space (which is now biometric in most cases). Well imagine, you did not have to do any of these and all these processes were automated. All the data required for the above mentioned processes is shared with the organization well before your first day at work. All one has to do to automate these tasks is to pull out the required data from where it is stored and process it in the requisite way-which is automation of this process. Experts are needed to automate many such support functions and the need for this will only increase in the coming years.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Remember, automation is only bound to open new avenues for fresh graduates and not reduce the hiring, as commonly believed. As a graduate, you should be willing to learn new things, evolve and up skill yourselves.
K Sridhar
Presently the Chief Digital Officer, K Sridhar is responsible for revenue streams related to professional skill development and integrated talent management for the banking and financial sector. He has over twenty years of experience in the Financial Services and Capital Markets in managerial positions.
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