Technical Roles in the IT industry
In case you are wondering about the various technical designations and their roles in the IT industry, this video is for you!
Before we go into these details, I’d like to emphasize that each and every team is unique, and these titles and roles tend to differ from company to company. These roles can be assigned or delegated as per organisation’s needs and goals. This is just a general framework and will give you a basic idea of what different designations and titles are.
Most importantly, even though giving titles is like tradition, you must not feel stuck with a particular title as it’s the skills, performance and consistency that matters the most.
Now that you have some motivation kicking in, I’ll start with entry level roles to senior level along with what work is required in that particular role.
Intern Developer
So, you’re fresh out of college and you want to make it big in the industry. Even though you might have the skills but you’ll have to work it out on the experience path to climb up the ladder.
Intern developers are usually involved in doing smaller less critical tasks such as testing sites for bugs and malware. Companies give on-the job or sometimes classroom training to such candidates.
Junior Developer
You’re now done with the training part and will be put to do tasks that are much more accountable than before. You’ll be assigned tasks according to your capabilities and will be monitored by a senior team member. As the title suggests, it would be a junior role so emphasis would still be on learning and getting things done faster and efficiently.
Developer
Depending upon your capabilities and interests you’ll now be called a developer, for example if you are into front-end technologies, you’ll be called a front-end developer. There’s no set rule on how soon can you progress from being an intern to a developer but usually it takes about 2–3 years. Your role will be to research, design, develop and manage software programs, writing and implementing efficient codes, deploying software tools, processes and metrics, sometimes training other employees, and work closely with other developers, UX designers, business and systems analysts to get the work done as per deadlines. With time and experience you may be called an engineer instead of developer but that again depends on company to company.
Senior Engineer/Senior Developer
With almost 4–5 years of experience under your belt, you may now be given the designation of a senior developer. However, the majority of the roles and responsibilities may still be the same but your management might start including you in client business meetings, internal meetings where you’ll be exposed to how things work on the business side. You’ll have to be updated with the latest changes done on a periodic basis.
Technical Lead/Engineering Lead/Team Lead
So, you have been working for almost 7–8 years now and have excellent hands-on experience with the entire SDLC or what we call Software Development Life Cycle. You will be given the post of a Tech Lead which means now you’ll have your own team of developers and senior candidates working on various projects.
How the team performs, how the deadlines are met, how the project is executed within the budget would be your responsibility. You need to get involved in majorly areas where something needs to be presented to the client.
Project Manager
A project manager is primarily involved in getting optimum results by communicating job expectations; planning, monitoring, and appraising job results; coaching, counselling, and disciplining employees; initiating, coordinating, and enforcing systems, policies, and procedures. PM will be accountable for one of several projects depending on the company’s needs. PM’s team will have tech lead, senior and junior developers and needs to make sure that the entire project is completed within the specified time frame and budget.
Architect / Chief Architect
An Architect possesses leadership qualities, seeks to continually improve their skill-set and serves as the team leader for the innovation and creation of products along with its program features. They seek to manage and facilitate the proper design of large websites or programs within products. From software coding to innovative design, an Architect is the key to creating a seamless software experience for customers working on both technical and design aspects of a project.
Some companies directly appoint a Chief Architect who evaluates the technological needs of employees and client users to inform the company on software and program planning and development. They do this by having a thorough understanding of a company’s business plan. Chief architects need to be knowledgeable in business and in IT because they will be required to participate on both sides of this spectrum.
CTO (Chief Technical Officer)
Here comes a big gun in the company. The CTO role can comprise one specific domain responsibility or can have multiple roles, all bundled up in one. Let’s say for example, if it is a tech startup, the CTO is often the technical co-founder and might assume other roles as well such as training, marketing or operations.
In the majority of the organisations, the CTO role has multiple hats. They might participate in day to day activities, business meetings, sales and marketing etc. They also set the developmental vision of the company, paving a roadmap for the team to work towards.
CEO (Chief Executive Officer)
The position of the utmost authority of an organisation, CEO sets the vision of the company. From deciding who will run what part of the company along with figuring out the core team, the CEO is the spearhead of the organisation. Mostly, CEOs are also the public face of the company (eg. Steve Jobs with Apple ).
As we discussed about the CTO role, the CEO also wears multiple hats. But at the end of the day, if there’s an important decision to be taken, there’s no higher authority than a CEO.
If you’re a CEO of a company, people will look up to you for all the things important and you’ll be responsible for the decisions you take.
So, what we discussed are generic roles under which majority of the organisations fall. Now, there can be various IT departments such as Development, DevOps, Test Team, Architecture, Operations, Customer/Client Support, Research & Development, Design, Quality Assurance etc. Each department can have a set of their own interns, juniors, senior and lead role resources.
What organization structure suits the best depends on a lot of factors but the basics remain the same more or less.
I am sure you’ll have a fair idea by now about the various roles in an IT company.
Does your company have other roles other than the ones we discussed?
Let us know in the comments section below.
About me:
Founder and CEO of an IT company in India, I have more than 23+ years experience of dealing with people, processes and codes. I started online training for my students when it was not in fashion and have trained more than 1000 students/working professionals personally which has helped them to secure awesome jobs or even start their own business.
I am also an active corporate trainer for several years now and have been consulting with top Fortune 1000 companies to streamline their development projects efficiently.
My goal is to share knowledge with a primary focus on advanced tools & techniques, projects and standard programming practices to help my students understand the basics and fundamentals and make awesome technological implementations.
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