In order to get a good orientation on your career path, it’s important to know what opportunities the industry you are targeting offers. The IT industry, not only in Bulgaria but globally, at the moment, is in a big upswing, thousands of newly trained professionals are needed and the shortage on a global scale is calculated to be in the millions. But how can we find our place in this dynamic sphere? What opportunities are revealed to novice developers?
The various professions in the software industry
Programmer / Software Developer – in simple terms, programmers or developers are people, who create software by writing programming code. For a person to develop and experience the pleasure of working, it is necessary to constantly learn and be interested in the latest technologies. Software developers need to combine excellent technical knowledge with logical thinking, a certain amount of creativity, and a lot of curiosity because of the constantly emerging technologies. It is important to note that the software developer does not just write commands, but also builds architectures, foresees potential problems, and works in a team, where the term software engineer originates from.
This profession is divided into many paths you can take. For example, you can choose:
- Front-end developer – these specialists take care of what a web site / web app looks like – what users see and how they interact with the page and its content. Most often they have excellent knowledge in technologies such as HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
- Back-end developer – the back-end of a web page or application consists of various parts – server logic, databases and much more. Back-end developers who deal with these technologies have excellent knowledge in programming languages such as PHP, Ruby, Python.
- Developer of mobile applications – as implied by the name of the profession, these software engineers create software (applications) for devices like smartphones and tablets. Specifically, they can deal with Android apps (using mostly the Java programming language) for iPhone / iPad (with Objective-C or Swift), Windows (with C #), and others.
- Embedded Developer – Representatives of this profession are engaged in development of software for embedded systems. In their work, they often have to consider the limitations of the hardware they write code for. It is important to have knowledge of C / C ++, data structures, algorithms, Linux, Perl / Python – depending on the specific projects they are working on.
- Other possible areas of development: desktop applications, video games, and so on.
- QA Engineer – they are an important part of the software development process. Essentially, QA engineers are engaged in testing and finding bugs / issues on web sites, applications and others. As their name suggests (QA = quality assurance), they take care of software quality. Part of their tasks are monitoring and improving the quality process, conducting a test plan, definition and implementation of test scenarios, analysis, reporting and documenting results.
- Technical support – these specialists help the end users or employees of the company they work for, in case of problems and need of help with computers, software programs or hardware. This profession is often the first step for people with interest in a career in the software industry. They are required to have good knowledge not only in computer software, but also hardware, and the ability to quickly cope with problems, and work with clients.
Starting internship and work
At the Software University, one of our main goals is to help our students get started with a career in the IT industry. For this reason, we also have a career center that is entirely focused on the professional realization of all its students. The Career Center aims to help students make the most of their potential by developing not only their technical skills but also additional personal qualities. This results in successful collaboration and the building of solid relationships with our students and business partners. The Career Center has partnered with some of the best, successful, and fast growing companies in the country. This offers a vast array of opportunities and pathways to development in each direction of the technological sector.
