Tech doesn’t always mean technical. Jobs in the tech industry are highly diverse, meaning problem-solving skills and commercial knowledge are highly sought after.
The jobs that might be the next step for your career
- If you have STEM or technical skills, explore a job as a data scientist or software engineer.
- If you have exceptional creative, problem-solving and people skills, use these search terms: user experience designers or customer success managers.
- If you’ve got skills that combine commercial, creative and technical knowledge, consider a career as a product manager.
There are also many jobs in the tech sector that are found in other industries, such as salespeople, lawyers, policy and government relations specialists, accountants and finance managers, project managers, HR managers, marketers and media and communications professionals.
UX Designer
User experience designers make sure products work for people in the real world. They research user needs using a variety of methods from observing them in place, undertaking surveys and interviews, holding workshops and analysing data. They then work with a team to make a product or service usable, enjoyable, and accessible.
Product Manager
Product managers combine commercial, people and tech skills to help design and build products. Product managers work out customer needs and business objectives that a product or feature must meet and manages a multi-disciplinary team to turn the vision into reality.
Software Engineer or Developer
Software engineers and developers design, build, test and improve software products and systems.
Data Scientist
A data scientist uses data analysis to answer questions, solve problems and make systems work better. Their role includes defining the problem or question they need to solve, working out the best analytical methods to solve it, gathering, cleaning and structuring a dataset, undertaking analysis of it, checking their results, and then explaining their findings.
Customer Success Manager
Customer success managers are key team members who make sure customers successfully adopt software products. They are an increasingly important and common role as businesses move to sell software on a subscription, rather than off-the-shelf. Customer success managers meet regularly with customers to help troubleshoot adoption challenges.
This might include solving technical problems, helping with advice on culture and change management, or teaching the customer new skills so they can successfully use the product.
How do people get into tech jobs?
The tech sector is a fast-growing and highly dynamic sector. The skills and knowledge required in jobs evolves regularly. This means the sector has high demand for workers and is prepared to take them via multiple paths.
There are five ‘doors’ by which a person can take-up a tech job in Australia. These are:
- Entering the sector as a first professional job directly from university or other training
- Moving from a non-tech job in another industry into a tech job or the tech sector
- Returning to work after a period of not working, e.g. for family leave, to study, or because of a period of unemployment
- Joining the Australian industry from overseas under Australia’s skilled migration program
- Moving from one tech job to another tech job
Which door will you take?
Explore the tech job opportunity in our Australia’s Tech Jobs Opportunity – Cracking the Code to Australia’s Best Jobs report.
