Non-IT careers for Engineers

A few years back, the most important decision an engineer had to make while still studying, was whether to opt for a job in the core-technical area or go for IT services. Recently several new areas have emerged where engineers find ample opportunity to apply their analytical and quantitative skills.I would go on to elaborate some of them:

Data Analytics:

Lots of analytics work being outsourced to India now. The job involves performing statistical analysis using software packages such as SAS, SPSS. Matlab and VBA are also popular in financial analytics.But most credit card and insurance companies tend to use SAS. Some typical companies offering such positions include :

1. Capital One : Its a consumer finance company(credit cards and stuff) and regularly recruits in top engg. instis in India. Most of the data analysis work is regarding credit card operations/transactions of its customers. They have an office in Mumbai and Bangalore. Pay for entry-level analyst is excellent. Most analytics jobs involve SAS.

2. American Express: Same as Capital one. There is a huge risk management team in Gurgaon (close to Delhi) which handles several aspects of credit card risks. Work involves building several SAS-based statistical models for credit card transactions. There is a team which also builds and monitors corporate risk as well although its more common to find engineers in the retail credit risk division than corporate risk division.

3. Bank of America Continuum Solutions: They have several back-office work related to derivatives, equities and bonds. Many of them are IT back-office work, but here we are talking about analytics and financial research related work. Offices are in Mumbai, Gurgaon , Hyderabad.

4. E-serve: It has been taken over by TCS and is mainly a BPO. But it also has some profiles which involve high-end analytics.


5. Market Rx: They provide sales and marketing solutions to companies in the healthcare segment. Has office in Gurgaon. They recruit from several engineering colleges for the role of providing analytics driven market research. The profiles require the use of statistical packages such as SAS, SPSS and databases such as SQL and MS Access.
6. Genpact- It has an excellent analytics team.
7. Fractal Analytics: Office in Mumbai.
There are plenty of more KPOs which offer such positions to engineers as listed below:
Absolutdata

Evalueserve

Modelytics

Boston Analytics

Global Analytics India Pvt. Ltd

Inductis (India) Pvt. Ltd.

Dunnhumby

Ameriprise

Accenture business analytics- Gurgaon

Hewitt – Human resource analytics

HSBC Analytics

Z S Associates (although a consulting firm, its offices in Pune and Gurgaon perform analytics)

It is important understand that analytics work exists in different flavours. The kind of work in a credit card would typically be related to risk management 1) operational risks 2) credit risk 3) country risk.
A lot of behaviour modelling techniques would be used in analytics used in consumer driven industries such as telecom, retail, HR, insurance. Today analytics finds application in lots of industries.

HOW TO LAND AN ANALYTIC JOB

1. Its important to know a lot of statistical analysis. Some imp techniques are multivariate analysis, factor component analysis, logit/probit regression and its tests such as serial correlation, heteroskedasticity, stationarity, etc. I would advice one to complete one of the core technical paper of Acturial Series like CT3, CT6

2.Learn SAS/SPSS, preferably SAS. Infact there are SAS certifications available which one can complete with a bit of effort. In case you want 2 prcatice pirated SAS software is available at Nehru Place, Delhi.

Having both 1 and 2 under ur belt is just an unbeatable strategy.

Financial analytics is a completely different field and it requires the application of stochastics, differential equations,etc. VBA in Excel and Matlab programming are used. Plus certifications such as FRM and PRM might be useful if u dont have a masters. Also check the CQF certification.

Strategy Consulting:

Several strategy consulting firms also recruit engineers who fall under one of these categories:
(i) Fresh B-Tech grads
(ii) Having relevant experience in a specific industry (say oil and gas, power, chemicals)
(iii) Having 1-2 year experience in a KPO in the business research division.
Some of the strategy consulting companies accepting engineers are :
PriceWaterhouseCoopers
Ernst and Young
Deloitte (both front office in Delhi and back-office in Hyderabad)
Bain Capability Centre(not purely consulting, more back office)
Capgemini
Everest Consulting(Gurgaon)
Inductis
ZS Associates(Pune)

Real Estate Firms :
With lots of activity seen in the real estate sector in India, there are quite a few real estate investment firms requiring research analysts.Some of them are

1. Jones Lang LaSalle
2. Fire Capital
3. DTZ
4. RedFort Capital

Others

Some other interesting options include

Flagstone Reinsurance- Recruits engineers from premiere colleges for Actuarial work. Progress in clearing Actuarial papers would be beneficial
Swissre- Another reinsurance companies that recruits fresh engineering graduates for Actuarial work.
FuturesFirst- Engineers are recruited for trading roles in bonds, derivatives.