Tech Pursuits-In keeping with technological advancements, the IT sector now offers a number of niche career opportunities to graduates. Reported by Pooja Mahimkar

India’s  IT  sector is expected to grow 11% per annum and triple its current annual revenue to reach US$350 billion by FY 2025, as per NASSCOM. While this growth is expected to further boost employment opportunities in the sector in the future, IT graduates today too have many careers to choose from. Apart from the obvious private and public sector opportunities that graduates can explore in India as well as overseas, graduates also have the option to venture into the business and academic world. 

Here are the three major upcoming options the field offers:

  

 Cloud computing

Cloud computing involves storing data on the internet without needing any physical storage drive. Since most organizations are looking to upgrade from their servers to the cloud, jobs in the cloud computing sector are multiplying. Fresh graduates or IT professionals who wish to make a career in this field can work as cloud architects, cloud engineers, cloud consultants, etc.

“Enterprises have to leverage the power of software to reimagine, redefine and rewrite the way their current data, applications and infrastructure are managed. This has brought back the focus on hiring and nurturing talent with core software engineering skills like cloud computing,” says Samson David, SVP – head, global services, cloud and infrastructure services, Infosys.

Sectors that hire: Telecom, social media, e-commerce and banking 

Big data Analysis 

Big data analytics is the process of examining large amounts

of varied data to identify not-so-obvious patterns and correlations, market trends, customer choices and such statistics that can provide insightful analysis to businesses. 

“In India, the latest areas of research are big data analysis, cloud computing, web security, cyber laws, data mining, business intelligence, 4G, mobile telephony, etc. One needs to have good analytical, logical and programming skills in addition to good communication skills to make a career in this field. For this, a candidate must learn various programming languages and should try and implement them in small projects that they undertake during their academic years,” says Roopali Garg, assistant professor, department

of IT, Panjab University,

Chandigarh.

Sectors that hire: Finance and insurance, technology, scientific and academic sectors 

Ethical hacking

Ethical hackers are employed to find loopholes in a company’s security system and save it from hackers. Ethical hackers perform vulnerability assessments and penetration tests to identify and report the weak zones of a company’s software and the potential hacking risks to keep the system healthy. 

“Cyber crime, data breach, email frauds and website defacement are common issues organisations face. Banks, IT companies and government bodies are most likely to fall prey to hackers. Since only a few people are aware of ethical hacking as a career in our country, there are a number of jobs,” says Anshuman Kak, co-founder and director, SecRoot Security Solutions Pvt Ltd.

Professionals in this field can work as security researchers, secure code reviewers, information security consultants, information security analysts, cyber security professionals, network security engineers and digital forensics analysts.

Sectors that hire: Banking, IT e-commerce and social media