Hello and welcome. I wanted to speak about the automotive careers. Just want to take maybe 5 10 minutes of your time to explain what exactly is the automotive sector like, what are the careers that you have and what does each career track mean. I am doing this primarily because there is a lot of people who keep pushing let’s say electric vehicles or maybe something like ADAS or maybe autonomous vehicles.
They keep pushing a lot of that down students throats. They say, this is the future and this is how your careers are going to be. So I just wanted to put some light on the whole thing. I wanted to explain what exactly happens in the industry. So the reason I know about these things is because I’ve I currently work as a consultant with three different OEMs who make automobiles in India.
I have also worked with staffing companies. So these are companies who supply manpower to these companies. And I’ve been on the staffing side for these companies. I work, currently work with the OEMs as well. Gives me a very unique proportion, unique view on things quite unlike the other edutech companies who basically work only on the educational side, so from that perspective, if you take any automobile, any automotive career maybe let us make it automobiles, let us not even making, make it automotive career. Let us just make it automobiles. so we will not talk about two wheeler, three wheeler, four wheeler, let us not get into that discussions right now.
We will just look at the field as it is, the whole outlook of it and then we will try to build it. Now when you take your automotive sector anything that you take I think there are two different ways that you can hope to build your career here.
The first one, I would call it as the OEM or Tier 1 companies and here comes your aftermarket. OEM let’s probably speak about aftermarket first. So aftermarket is basically all your workshops and garages and those kinds of things, right? So let’s probably speak about this. This is probably going to be taking much lesser time than the OEM.
So let’s just do this and then we’ll go into the OEMs. So on the automotive aftermarket side again, you have service and repair. You would also probably have accessories. Let’s say yeah, let’s just have it as accessories here. This is something which happens on one more side.
This is the accessories and other businesses which happens. Then you have used cars. So probably accessories and all your detailing cars and all of those things. And this is used cars, right? So there might be a spillover. Someone might do all three. Why am I having it separate, right? Let us not get into that discussions, but the kind of skills that you might need are probably going to be a little different for all of these three things, right?
What you might need for service and repair, accessories and used cars might be slightly different like when it comes to that. Now, on the service and repair side again, we have, let us say technicians and we also have let’s say something like body shop, this will be tinkering, painting and all of those things. Technicians primarily will be all on the mechanical side of things. Then you have electrical and electronics, let’s just have that here. And probably we might also have something like on the technical side, right? So we might have the other specialization is going to be HVAC.
So HVAC is AC technicians, right? These are probably going to be the the major careers that you might have if you decide to go into service and repair. Running a service center as a business, I’m not speaking about that, right? But this is basically what we need to be looking at.
So a technician body shop. It’s different skill sets. These are probably blue collar skill sets. You might have to know about all of these things if you are trying to have your own business. It, it happens like that. Now again When it comes to accessories, right? So we’ll have accessories, electrician.
So now this particular person might have specific knowledge about how to fix an audio system, how to fix a horn or a, I don’t know, central locking system or your alarm or something like that. And then you have detailers, right? So detailers again are a separate skill set, which you might need to probably it’s a blue color skill set, but you might need to have.
Now used cars I think this kind of way things gets interesting, right? So on used cars, you have evaluation. How do you check if your car is good? These are not technicians, but they still need to be able to evaluate the car, right? Evaluations And I think the most important thing here would be the salesperson.
You cannot be a good used car salesperson if you don’t really understand what sales is, how should you sell there are quite a lot of techniques for doing that. These would probably be the careers that you would be looking at when you get into the automotive aftermarket, right?
So this is on one side, right? Let’s just leave it there. Now, that’s aftermarket for you. So now when you come into the other side of things this way we speak about the OEM careers, right? So now how does OEM careers look? So now OEM careers are basically going to be people who are going to design this vehicle, manufacture the vehicle so those are going to be there, right?
I think at this point, I think we can also include a separate thing here, right? So when I say aftermarket I think it might be like aftermarket from two different perspectives, right? So let me just put that here. So aftermarket technically is not just one there are going to be there are going to be two different entities which are going to be playing here. So in the aftermarket, you might have dealerships. These are dealerships, which are again dealerships or authorized centers like. These are dealerships. I will probably call it a dealerships and we will also have what we call as the multibrand garages, dealerships and multibrand garages, but the skill sets remain same dealers to service repair, dealers to accessories. Dealers will not have used cars, but you will also have salesperson here, right? Dealers are also going to have salesperson here. So probably this might be a better way to put it up, right?
So aftermarket is basically going to be about two different things happening here. One is multi brand, other is dealerships. They share similar things. But dealerships especially, you will have used car salesperson, you will also have new car salesperson, so that is going to be the only difference, yeah, so I think that is with the aftermarket. Now getting back into the OEMs which is basically the companies themselves, the manufacturers themselves. I think here. You might probably have maybe, two, three different skill sets which comes in, right? So let’s probably put it up like this.
So there’ll be R& D engineers, right? So R& D engineers will be people who design and all those things. There’ll be production or. Shop floor engineers these are all engineers shop floor engineers and there will be engineers who are in the support side. Now, you can also argue that there is going to be, one more set which is basically going to be support in the sense we can probably call it as technical support functions and we can also probably have something like corporate And support, so corporate and support, this would include all the people who are there in your I’m not talking about HR per se, like I’m talking about sales, I’m talking about quality. So these are all people who would probably also be engineers maybe L and D, learning and development, internal learning and development.
So that’s also something which is going to come under this, so this is the major things that we have. Now the other thing which you will also have to keep in mind is that when I say that these are the major roles these are the major roles as we see in India. Now, this might be slightly different how it happens elsewhere, but this is basically how it happens in India.
Now, let us drill it down a bit more. R& D engineers, what are the type of R& D engineers that we might see. So I will probably split it into something like now this is for OEMs as well as tier 1s. OEMs are vehicle manufacturers, tier 1s are companies like Bosch Continental, Aptiv, maybe, companies like that.
The first categorization here I think I would probably it in terms of mechanical engineers and I will probably have something here called as electrical engineers and there is going to be something which is which is actually like really interesting so there is going to be something what I will personally call as convergence engineers, so of course, you can also have software engineers who probably are here,
engineers, so what do these people do? What are their functions? So this basically I’m trying to tell you how do these companies recruit or when they recruit, what is it they look for? And once you understand that so that can get converted into your careers.
Now, software engineers can be pretty much anything at all, right? It can be people who are developing full stack applications. It could be machine learning applications sometimes Android, there’s Java, there is UI, UX, there’s quite a lot of things. So for that reason, I am not going to be speaking in detail about it right now, right?
So this is not something where we can actually get in and we can probably speak about a lot. So I’m not going to talk about it. Mechanical engineers, assuming since it’s automotive you guys are probably be looking at it. So I would say there are there are basically CAD engineers, right? And CAD engineers are people who convert 2D to 3D, do the modeling and things like that.
Then there will be CAE engineers, which is crash, vibration and VH and there will be CFD engineers. So CFD is thermal or it could be aerodynamics or something like that. Then there are other engineers who basically mechanical engineers, but they work on production planning, how many vehicles should we produce, how should the plant be put up how do you do the dye design.
It goes one up, maybe we can probably call these people as product design engineers. Then you ask, okay is not that supposed to be part of this? Not
exactly. This is slightly different kind of a skill sets which you might need for this. Then you have, depending on the companies OEMs, so you might have someone let’s say others, but yeah, let’s probably not put it in here.
There might be other design engineer roles, but it’s probably going to be less. It’s not going to be as much as what you have in the other things. Now for the same reason, I am not going to be talking about this also for one very simple reason. These jobs that are not there has not been too much of a growth as far as these jobs are concerned.
So if you think that an average person can work for. Let’s say 30 years or 35 years then there are already people passing out in 2020 or 2024 then people who have passed out since 2000s, they are still in the workforce, they are still working, they are still occupying the positions.
Which means, in a very limited career growth space, and you’re entering too late into it. So there’s always a glass ceiling that you will hit. So you will grow for three years, four years, but after four years your career will start stagnating. It does not exactly pick up pace.
It does not grow beyond that, right? So for that reason, I personally do not want to advise anyone to, CFT engineer, that being said, not that you should not do if you are interested, but just my opinion that the scope that you have there is pretty limited. But if you think you do not know anything, I cannot do anything else, I mean you will always feel to do, just that I do not advise and I am probably not going to be talking about it for the same reason.
Electrical engineers, pure electrical engineers so these would probably be people who are going to be designing your electrical hardware, there is going to be electrical hardware design there are also going to be people who are going to be doing a lot of allied designs so that could be something like test engineers or there could be wiring harness, there, there are lot more of other things also which happens here. There is electrical. CFD, electrical CAD there, there are quite a lot of things which happens here. But it is not my forte I don’t work too much on this particular thing. Again the primary reason being the number of jobs which comes up in that is, is also like it’s been limited.
But, yeah, if you are an electrical engineer, what I would suggest you to do is first take up electrical hardware design. Because this is an in thing, right? There are not many people who can actually master it. So which basically means you have a much higher scope. I am neutral about this again, not many people coming in here.
Electrical engineers do not learn CAD but if you learn CAD, if you are getting okay with your wiring harness so you know something like Altium and from Altium schematics, you can convert it into some CAD drawings, you can do some little bit of things like that. So this need not be pure electrical engineering role.
It can be a mechanical engineer who is also doing this. But when you really look into it, what I am actually very excited about is basically the role of convergence engineers, because convergence engineers are people who are going to be working on multiple aspects, multiple different domains together.
It is like convergence engineers will work on all of these three things together, how does it actually happen, right? In convergence engineers. You have one primary job role, which is called model based design, MBD, right? This is all your MATLAB, Simulink you develop applications, you develop controls, you work with that, right?
That is basically one of those things which happens here. Now, this is where things get really interesting because you have embedded software also, which comes here. Embedded software development is also something which you have here because unlike a pure software engineer or a pure electrical engineer, you need to know both software and electrical systems to write embedded software, you are not going to be able to write a software for this unless you have knowledge of both of it. Hence, this I have just put it here under convergence domain. Then you would probably also have test engineers, right? So test engineers should also be like aware about electrical systems.
They should have Python knowledge and probably a lot of ISQTB standards and quite a lot of things like that as well. Then comes your calibration engineers. So calibration is what we call as tuning, right? If you want to tune for OEMs so we call that as calibration. Calibration engineers will also be required to be cross domain, they need to be cross domain. they need to have. of skill sets across the the whole area. Yeah, let us probably put it out here, nice and deep here, this is basically the skill sets where convergence engineers comes in and because of this reason, because it requires you to have knowledge about multiple systems, there is not many people who basically possess this, because there is not You know very well colleges, they don’t actually promote convergence engineering goals.
They are very much stream specific. So if you’re a mechanical engineer, that’s all you learn. If it’s an electrical engineer, that’s all you learn. So this is something which comes up here, right? That is model based design. There is test engineers, there is calibration engineers. Yeah.
So now let’s just rest it for a while and let’s probably come back into the discussion. Now, since we are talking about it, it makes sense to speak about the entire thing, right? Yeah, production and shop floor, right? Production and shop floor there is again going to be let us say two primary roles, right?
One is basically shop floor management. The other is production. management, so shop floor is you are the line supervisor. It’s basically how you learn how the whole thing works. You’re sitting there, you’re trying to understand how many pieces have come out, what is the quality?
So those are all things which goes into shop floor. Production, on the other hand, would probably focus on something like how do we make this better, do we realign the systems, again these are purely mechanical roles but it involves standing in the shop floor for a long time and then quality and I mean it is a different career this usually happens, his is a core mechanical job, if you are not from a mechanical domain or production for that matter, this is not something which might be very interesting for you, and then comes. Technical support, right? So technical support, again it’s a pretty interesting role here because what happens is technical support is also something where you need to have cross domain skills, right?
So you need to probably be prepared with let’s say something like automobiles. So there could be diagnostics department. There could be technical manuals, technical writing, technical manuals which comes under the same department. There could be dealer training, right?
There are a lot of things. So these are usually careers where People don’t move around a lot so maybe not much opportunities comes your way, but if it does, then I think it’s a pretty unique thing and you should definitely be looking at that, right? Now, okay, now is when things get really interesting, right?
This at least for me, it’s fascinating because most of you, you probably want to end up making. 10 lakhs a month, 20 lakhs a month. You want to be the top honcho in a in a firm or something like that. And most of you would probably think the way to do that is by getting into R and D engineer.
And then I go into convergence. I do this. I become this actually speaking. That’s not the way you can actually become right. You can become one. Maybe if you are an MBD designer now, maybe 15 years now, you would be a project manager. You could be a product manager. And if you are really lucky. You might end up being a division head or an engineering manager or something like that, if you are lucky, right?
But there is another sure shot way for you to climb to the top, right? Among all the other things that you do at corporate there are a couple of very important things and that would be techno commercial marketing. Commercial marketing. Now, this is a role not many people like doing. They are like, oh no, marketing, it is boring, sales, it is boring, I do not want to do that, there is a lot of negativity, I feel which has been assigned to this. But, I think, if you really look beyond it, right? So you can’t be a techno commercial marketing guy until you reach somewhere over here, right? You have a lot of skills here and then you get into techno commercial marketing.
So basically what’s happening is your corporate is asking you to come and help them with the marketing, speak to clients and do some techno commercial marketing. That’s a very interesting job role because you know what you are in techno commercial marketing. Yeah. Go around for five years and the next step is going to be you’re going to be manager There’s very few people who have technical skills and who also have scale skills, which are available So this is one of the quickest way for you to climb to the top If you are not having any other degree MBA or something, you still want to go there This is one of the quickest way for you to go techno commercial marketing Of course that being said there are also going to be roles in, let’s say supply chain or quality or purchase let’s probably put that here but I’m not very gung ho about all of these things because, again they don’t look at promoting these people all that much, there are all very limited number of people that you might need, so there’s not much of a, need for others over here.
I think this is a very nice bird’s eye overview on what happens on the aftermarket side and what also happens on the OEM side. Now, my question to you is when we are speaking about it, when we are looking at all these job roles you don’t have to take my word for it.
Please get on naukri. com, search for it and there’s the job roles that you’ll find. Now, anywhere in this. Do you actually see a title or something which says electric vehicle production or electric vehicle battery design, right? You do not actually see. This is the corporate organization structure and organization structure is agnostic about it.
What exactly is the vehicle or product or anything like that, right? It is agnostic. Which means this is the bird’s eye view that you need to have. And parallel to this, you will probably need to have something called as skill sets, right? Now, let us take one single job role and I will explain what kind of a skill sets that you might need for it, right?
Now, if you are doing model based design, right? And you can do model based design, let’s say for a couple of different activities we can probably do, let us probably think of three different things since we are talking about electric vehicles and autonomous, so now here, you might need to have what is called as your domain knowledge, so let us say you are developing controllers which is easy use, electronic control units. Or let us say that you are doing system design, which is, let us say let us say you are doing battery or motor or something like that or let us do you are doing systems engineering where you are doing integration of let us say powertrain.
You already have motors and gear boxes and you have all of those things with you. Now, all you are trying to do is you are trying to integrate these. This is something which a lot of startups and OEMs do. They do not actually design the battery pack themselves, they just try to integrate it, you probably seen that happen as well. Now, suppose model based design, there are three different roles which are available for you, imagine these are jobs then each of these jobs will need a separate domain knowledge, but the basic knowledge will be here. What is the basic knowledge?
I will probably explain it this way. Model based design is going to teach you, let us assume that let us assume that model based design is going to teach you about MATLAB and Simulink. And let us say that you are also learning about SysML, there are two different tools that you might need to know.
Let us assume that you are already learning about this, let us put it out here. You already learned about these two things. So you are here. Now, if you want to do model based design for controller development, then there is something extra that you need to know which is probably going to be about let us say controller hardware at least you should know what is an ECU, you what exactly is the control architecture, right?
What exactly is going to be your calibration? What’s the protocols? What is the standards? There’s going to be some things which is needed, right? So that is probably going to come from here. There’s no two requirements which is coming. Now, apart from this, when you’re doing a controller, right?
You might also want to do a little bit of testing. You might also need to know a little bit of domain knowledge. And let us say the controllers are basically being done for an electric vehicle, so then you will need to have EV domain knowledge. So what if you are not doing for an electric vehicle, you are probably doing it for gearbox control, transmission control, so then you should have transmission domain knowledge, this is basically how. Your jobs work, so now if you want to do system design for batteries and you want to do model based design, so maybe you are also, need to be familiar with let us say Emison that is a tool, so now that tool knowledge, how do you follow model based design process? And when you do batteries your domain knowledge will probably come into it is not transmission. It is going to be. Batteries battery domain knowledge. You should process battery domain knowledge. You want to do systems engineering integration, then you need to know vehicle, complete vehicle level details.
You need to understand systems engineering and then you will have to do it. So what I am trying to tell you is. Do not jump in and assume that you will need to learn EVs. Let me go do an EV course. And that EV course is basically going to give you only this knowledge, right? And this knowledge is not going to get you jobs, right?
It’s not going to get you any job because as far as I know, as far as I’ve seen JDs, as far as I’ve done requirements. If I need a person to do, to be a test engineer, okay, let’s leave this, I need someone to be a test engineer. Then I need a test engineer, maybe let’s say he’s basically someone who’s testing electric vehicles.
Let’s say I need him to be aware of, at least at least aware of what exactly is my product development life cycle, right? I want him to be aware of ISQTB the testing standards and other things. I want him to be. Let us say aware of ISO 26262, which is functional safety, and along with that, I also want him to possess, let us say, EV domain knowledge, so it is not that I would pick up someone just because they have EV, because EV domain knowledge is easily gained. But what is not easily gained is going to be all this other skill sets that you see here. Wrapping up. The information that I want to share with you is that jobs do not come with this domain knowledge.
Knowing about electric vehicles or autonomous vehicles or even tuning for that matter, it is just one part of your job. So if you are really sure about what kind of a jobs that you need, then you’ll need to be clear on which paths that you’re going to take. Are you going to go into the OEM side?
Are you going to go into the R& D side? Are you going to get into the aftermarket side? You need to be pretty clear about what exactly you want to do and you’ll need to develop the skill sets accordingly. Thank you.
