Diverse Careers in Tech — What if I don’t want to be an engineer?
When you think of the tech industry, you may imagine software engineers or someone with technical skills such as coding.
Tech companies don’t solely run on engineers though. Tech companies are looking for people with different skill sets and areas of expertise. They’re also hiring in areas such as product management, marketing, business development, sales, data science, data analytics, and design. We’re going to explore these other careers in this article.
Firstly, what do software engineers do?
Software engineers or “SWEs”, for short, are directly involved in the product development process and are the ones coding up the software. SWEs have extensive knowledge of programming languages, technology frameworks, computer systems, and computer science principles (such as data structures and algorithms). They apply this knowledge to every stage of the development process, from defining technical requirements to building the product.
Software engineering itself encompasses a variety of topics such as web engineering, mobile app development, security engineering, systems engineering, etc. It’s often split up into 2 branches: front-end development and back-end development. Front-end development refers to the client or user interface and these developers build what users interact with and see. Back-end development refers to the server, applications, and databases that work behind the scenes to power these components that enable the user-facing side of the application or front-end to even exist in the first place.
Important Skills: Multi-tasking, Analytical, Technical (Coding)
So, what can I do if I don’t want to be a software engineer?
Product Management
Product managers or “PMs”, for short, are responsible for guiding the success of a product or feature from ideation to release. Alongside engineers, PMs are also directly part of the product development process and understand the technology being built, but don’t do any coding. Product managers lay out a product vision and strategy that delivers some unique value based on user needs. Product managers typically interface with engineering, design, marketing, and sales teams on a daily basis. This is an interdisciplinary role that is often described as sitting at the intersection of technology, business, and design. Since this role is so interdisciplinary, there’s no really one size fits all description or consistent day-to-day, and it changes depending on the company or product needs.
Important Skills: Communication, Entrepreneurial, Data-Driven, Understands Technical, Creativity, User-Centric
Data Science
Data scientists try to figure out the unknown by asking questions, writing algorithms, and building statistical models. Like software engineers, data scientists code, however, they only work with data and don’t touch the code that directly goes into building the software. They develop the processes for modeling data collected by the company about its’ users’ behavior. Data scientists often come from computer science or mathematics/statistics backgrounds. The most common programming languages in this field right now are Python, SQL, and R.
Important Skills: Data-driven, Analytical, Quantitative (Python, SQL, R), Communication
Data Analytics
Data analysts are very similar to data scientists, except the roles come with a few key differences. Data analysts utilize data to draw meaningful insights and solve problems. They analyze large data sets to answer business needs and questions. Data analysts analyze data to help businesses make more strategic decisions and tend to be less technical while data scientists focus more on creating new processes for data modeling and predicting the unknown.
Important Skills: Business-Minded, Strategical, Data-Driven, Analytical, Quantitative
Marketing
The marketing team at tech companies play a key role in helping the company promote their product or service. Marketing teams think of new ideas and ways to create content and campaigns to engage a variety of audiences. This is a completely non-technical position. You are working on the business side of the company, helping drive the success of the product. Marketing is also a broad field with many different branches. Channel marketing includes areas such as social media, email, search engine optimization, and affiliate marketing. Growth marketing emphasizes the principles of awareness, acquisition, activation, retention, revenue, and referral. Product marketing is in charge of developing the positioning, messaging, competitive differentiation or anything related to the process of promoting or selling a product to the customer.
Important Skills: Creativity, Collaboration, Interpersonal, Analytical
Business Development
Business development is defined as the creation of long-term value for an organization from customers, markets, and relationships. Business development professionals are experts in their industry and extremely knowledgeable about the current market so that they can identify strategic partnerships or opportunities for growth. In this position, you’ll play a big part in defining the direction of a product.
Important Skills: Industry Expertise, Interpersonal, Strategical
Sales
Similar to business development, sales is all about growing new business, however, the primary function of the sales team is to generate revenue. While the business development team may identify strategic partnerships, the sales team is responsible for selling the product and closing the deal. You’ll be the one directly pitching the product to a potential client. If you are great at building relationships and love meeting new people, this may be the role for you.
Important Skills: Relationship Building, Communication, Interpersonal
User Experience (UX) Design
UX designers are responsible for making digital products usable and effective. Designers design how the product looks and feels. They take things into account such as accessibility, usability, and visual appeal. It’s an extremely user-centric role that requires insight into the psychology of the user.
Important Skills: Creativity, Psychology, User-Centric, Design-Oriented, Collaborative
In a tech company, all these business functions work together to make sure the company is delivering a world-class product to its customers. Each piece is equally important and is needed to complete the puzzle.
What if I’m passionate about technology, but I don’t want to work in a position at a tech company?
Venture Capital or “VC”, for short, may be the perfect fit for you. Venture capital is a type of financing that funds startups or emerging companies believed to have high growth potential. Venture capitalists are often knowledgeable about a specific vertical and identify and invest in these companies in their area of expertise. VC firms will specialize in one type of investing; either early-stage (seed, Series A/B), late-stage (Series C to pre-IPO), or stage-agnostic (any stage). VCs provide this funding to startups in exchange for equity or a share of a company. These investments are locked until a company goes public or is acquired. That is how VC firms make money. As over ⅔ of VC-backed startups fail, this industry is characterized by high risk, but also high reward.
Important Skills: Risk-Loving, Industry Expertise, Basic Financial Modeling, Analytical, Interpersonal, Entrepreneurial
