Tech is a popular industry, so popular that many people have transitioned from other careers.

Whereas others are left figuring out how to break into tech.

There’s been a huge advancement in the type of tech roles available to people.

Over the last 20 years, there’s been a significant shift in the way tech companies operate in the digital space.

Not only tech companies but companies in general.

This evolving trend has led to more job roles becoming available and increasingly popular.

Going through all the job roles within the tech industry is a pointless task.

(1) Because there are a dozen roles, some we’ve never even heard of and counting

(2) Who’s got time for that?

What would be helpful is to have a list of the most popular roles in the tech industry and break these down one by one.

Well then, just your luck!

Below we’ve compiled a few examples of what we think are some of the top tech jobs in the industry.

Some of which you will be familiar with, but for others probably not — and that’s ok.

The role everyone loves to play… I can consider these individuals the most important people after the customer.

Why?…

Because they build what the customer will end up loving for the rest of their lives.

A developer has many names, including engineer, code, programmer, dev, technical specialist, etc.

Whenever you hear any of these terms, people tend to be speaking about the same group.

This is the same group who builds the product; brings things to life, and does the technical heavy lifting.

Whenever a product is built, ask yourself… who builds this?

In tech, we’ve seen a range of products brought to market, millions of products, for that matter, and it’s all down to some highly intelligent individuals.

When we’re talking software, applications, and systems, it’s developers who build these.

It’s not necessarily the developers who design what needs to be built, that’s other individuals who do that.

But when we speak about building software from scratch, it’s all the technicality and experience that a developer brings that makes that creation possible.

Without developers, nothing can be built in tech – software-wise and systematically.

As you’ve probably noticed by now, the role they play in a business as well as a team is critical.

You want to protect them at all costs. Damn! How much is that going to cost?

To be a software engineer / developer you do not need professional certifications per se, it’s more to do with experience and technicality.

For example, being competent in a programming language such as Python or JavaScript.

The more technical you are the better.

Becoming a seasoned developer takes time, it doesn’t happen overnight.

There are various training and boot camps available that help you build the skills needed for the role.

Take a free look at some of the tips mentioned in our other post here: Tech Careers: Secure Your Place With a Job in Technology

The more you code and work as a developer, over time you’ll find yourself becoming more comfortable with the work you’re doing.

There are always challenges – that’s life! And you can rest assured that you will get tested and tried.

It’s common for even the most senior engineers to experience writer’s block when creating code, and ensuring code works as intended.

It’s important to remember that it’s a process, and ongoing learning is key.

We never stop learning especially in tech, you should make it a habit to learn.

Quality Assurance Engineers, also known as QAs or Testers, form part of a software development team that works on software engineering projects.

As a Tester, you work alongside a development team, product manager, project manager, business analyst, business designer, etc.

Software testers are deemed the least likeable of the bunch simply because their job is to test how good a piece of software is.

It can be argued that the job of a tester is to break software; prove the durability or inadequacy of a product, and share why that’s the case.

But don’t let that dishearten you, as you can see why that’s the case.

A tester does more than just break software, they help give the team eyes on things that may have been overlooked otherwise.

Spotting a defective product can help businesses save millions, if not billions, depending on the scale of the problem.

For example, what happens when a social media update crashes everyone’s smartphone and disrupts the entire mobile market?

This is the type of scenario where having a tester may prevent that situation from ever occurring.

With a tester, you can rest assured that your product will be thoroughly tested before it becomes available for a launch/release.

What are some of the characteristics of Tester’s?

Inquisitive: Test engineers are inquisitive; they challenge the work that’s in front of them – never accepting things at face value.

Usually, when work comes in to be tested, a test engineer does a sense check to determine the feasibility of the tests, i.e. is this even testable?

All these questions come as necessary steps in understanding the different types of testing that need to be performed.

Analytical: Test engineers possess an analytical mindset; how work is deciphered and prioritised comes down to how the work is analysed, to begin with.

A tester picks out what needs to be conducted to achieve the desired outcome.

The business goal may be to have a product pass 95.5% of tests, whereas for others there may be exceptions.

Again, it helps when you can analyse your workload to the extent that you can identify what is most important, from a test perspective.

Unflappable: Testers need to show calmness and maintain integrity when under pressure.

There are many instances where the work of a test engineer is frowned upon due to the lack of visibility of other teams.

The primary role of the tester is to provide a clear picture of the risks that exist within software.

Whether or not these are addressed or prioritised is not the tester’s responsibility.

However, the tester wants to ensure everyone is aware of the risks involved with the product, if any.

It is under such circumstances that the tester will face scrutiny, but if they are not satisfied with the quality/results, then it’s in everything’s best interest to know why.

Attentive: Good attention to detail is key, you want to capture what others have missed.

You need to be able to make sense of the details within a story.

You always want to be on the lookout for what you’d expect in a story, and what you’d least expect from a story.

In tech, this is referred to as the happy and unhappy paths.

This essentially means that testers have to be attentive to what are considered to be good scenarios vs bad scenarios.

What does the role entail?

The software tester ensures that a product is working as expected, preventing any risk that may cause minor/major disruption.

It is the tester’s responsibility to spot any defective problems that impact a product’s functionality, operability, health, and user experience.

The idea is that before any product can go to market (or in other words, the ‘customer’).

The product must first pass a series of tests to ensure it’s safe and good enough to go in front of the customer.

How to determine “what’s good enough” depends on what you define as good enough or something of value.

Different companies have different ideologies.

For example, at one company, a product that has a 95% pass rate is a good enough product ready to go to the customer.

Whereas another company may feel that products require a 98% pass rate, at a minimum, before you can start thinking about a potential launch.

The types of tests performed are also tailored to what you’re trying to accomplish, but at the same time, test what the pain threshold is.

This is done in two ways – positive testing and negative testing.

Positive tests relate to all the things you expect to happen – also known as the ‘happy path’.

But things aren’t always sunny and rosy, this is where you have negative tests that take into consideration worst-case scenarios.

Ways you can become a tester?

Testing, by itself, doesn’t require any special qualification or award. Everyone at some point has acted as or played the role of a tester.

It doesn’t just have to be in tech. If you’ve trialed something to see whether or not you realise the outcome you expect, then you’ve played the role of a tester.

When you try a new recipe for the first time – you may not have all the confidence, so you try it out first to see what outcome you get…

That, beloved, is a sign you’ve played the role of a tester.

But the most common test we’ve all probably done is when you try to connect to the wi-fi. You input the password and expect to have internet access.

All of these are different test examples, you might not see it that way but hopefully, this grants you a new perspective.

Despite the above common knowledge you can get professionally qualified by a reputable membership body, such as the British Computer Society.

Here you can become part of a professional community of testers after completing an industry-recognised certification.

One of the most recognised testing certifications you should get your hands on is the ISTQB certification in software testing (not sure if that’s called something else now).

So, certification-wise, that’s what you do. How do you go about it?

It’s best to seek professional training at a company offering such an opportunity.

You want to look at companies that are in the field and have been doing so for many years.

There are a lot of companies, you just want to make sure you pick some of the best ones.

To find out more on this, check out our post here – Tech Careers: Secure Your Place with a Job in Technology

The Product Manager is the product guru, they know the product inside and out.

It’s like their precious baby.

The Product Manager takes ownership of the overall product development and delivery.

They’re not the ones creating the actual product itself, but they play a key role in knowing how the product should be developed, based on discussions  with business stakeholders.

Ideally, the product manager knows exactly what the business wants and communicates that to the development team to have the product built and ready to go.

Some discussions go on in the background to agree on what can be built from a developer’s perspective.

These discussions will include thoughts about what is technically feasible and what’s essential.

What are some of the qualities that enable you to be good at this role?

Commercial awareness: Product Managers possess strong commercial awareness and business acumen.

They understand current trends and keep their ear on the market.

As a Product Manager, having commercial awareness means you know your product and understand the business you’re in.

Prioritisation: Product Managers are good at prioritising, simply put, not everything needs to be prioritised, and this is one of the key characteristics.

For example, there may be a range of new product ideas that may be the next big thing, but which ones do we feel are essential?

It’s better to focus on a handful of things as opposed to a large number of things.

Experience: There are a variety of experiences that can help prepare you to become a Product Manager.

You can pull these experiences from anywhere really, ideally, it should just be a combination of two things.

Product development and project management.

To be a Product Manager, you need to understand the development process of products.

This could come from a methodology such as SDLC (software development life cycle), or having a specialist in a particular product.

The only real experience required is knowing how a product is built and the process behind everything end-to-end. But the focus is the product in question.

A Product Manager has a product-centric mindset, which means everything needs to fit around the product in question.

This is where commercial awareness and having an eye for products come in.

How to Become a Product Manager

There are many professional certifications you can get to certify you’re ability as a Product Manager.

You can take some training courses from industry-recognised membership bodies such as Scrum.org, which offer several pathways within the IT software and product development realm.

You can also just find yourself doing the role of a Product Manager unofficially, as companies don’t always have it as an official role in the team.

But as mentioned earlier, when you know your product and understand its business.

If you get to a point where it becomes your specialism, nothing is stopping a company from appointing you to manage all product-related endeavours.