For every 60 Million vehicles produced, 9 Million people were employed. The automotive industry is a major industrial and economic force around the world. The total automobiles sold around the world between 2005 and 2021 has been shown below :
Even with the observable effect of the Covid-19 pandemic, the automotive industry did face a tremendous dip but it also did well in properly adjusting its course. The very nature of the industry (innovation driven) allowed nations to shift their focus towards better energy sources during the global shutdown. Thus, giving rise to new sectors and demand.
Employment opportunities in the Automotive Industry
The automotive industry has always been a driving force for constant innovations in every involved sector so as to cater to the rising demand around the globe. This requires constant funding, R&D (Research & Development) and skill upgradation of the workforce. In the current industry scenario, in-house training is provided by experienced associates in collaboration with vocational education and training institutes. According to the Research Unit for Political Economy (R.U.P.E.), the combined employment in the automobile and auto ancillary units industries reached 1.4 million in India. Indias annual production of automobiles in FY22 was 22.93 million vehicles. In the European Union, 13.8 Million people were employed directly or indirectly by the automotive sector out of which 2.6 Million were under direct employment by manufacturers of motor vehicles. India recorded 5.2 million employments in automotive production, sales and services combined. The automotive industry not only faced the COVID-19 pandemics problem but also the global microchip shortage problem and emerged with better plans for innovation. Disbanding the traditional way of better microchips for better functionality, manufacturers made use of available microchips (varying performance capacities) and created new, better softwares for the consumers to use in their vehicles.
Trends and Careers in the Automotive Industry
With rapid technological developments across other engineering sectors happening around the globe, the Automotive Industry has entered an era of public demand for a connected, renewable energy operated, smart vehicle. In-house software development and training is now an extremely important program for the entirety of the automobile sector. Major corporations are recruiting skilled software developers, ethical hackers and IT experts to create their own individual Operating Systems with high security standards for their vehicles. Global Digitisation has allowed the automobile industry to hire social media executives/ influencers to manage their content on various platforms creating more than before, varied and strategic employment across multiple sectors. The trend of the future in the Automotive Industry currently follows the EASCY rule:
Electrified – emission free mobility, chargeable from renewable sources, low carbon imprint,
Autonomous – self driving vehicles, use of advanced Artificial Intelligence (A.I.), reduces human error,
Shared – managed fleets of shared vehicles, low mobility cost, best for public transportation,
Connected – vehicles connected to the internet, data streaming capabilities,
Yearly updates – annual software updates, security checks, debugging tendencies.
Hardware capabilities also continue to expand for the automotive sector with domains like electrification; body design, infotainment etc. are also as lucrative as software for a solid career in this industry. With demand and research in autonomous driving moving forward, huge scopes in the domains of mechatronics, automation, computer vision and A.I. can be predicted for the future. Some of the current highly sought after roles for engineering professionals in this industry are :
Data Science: Deals with data analytics and is in high demand as the main purpose of this role is to analyze all sorts of input and output data to improve production cycle, reduce production cost and optimize the A.I. workload. Some of these job roles include Telemetry Software Engineers, Data Scientists, Deep Learning Performance Engineers, A.I. Inference Software Engineers.
Research: Deals with the ever changing customer demands and needs. Data Annotation Engineers and Machine Learning Scientists work with camera data sets to train the neural network of the A.I. for better computer vision capabilities. Business Intelligence Administrators come into play for their critical decision making capabilities for the business side of the automotive industry.
Design: Mechanical Design Engineers design and build prototypes of the vehicles overall structure in tandem with Sensor Hardware Designers who work with the interior & exterior sensory units of the vehicle. Battery Process Engineers are responsible for the design, testing and optimization of battery cells for power.
Production: Control Engineers are responsible for the automation of repetitive tasks to save production time. Sensor Integration Engineers modify and connect the various sensors with the vehicle for different intended purposes. A Plant Operations Analyst is responsible for CMMS maintenance, routine & shutdown planning, scheduling and tracking of the sequential progress during execution.
Quality Control: Embedded Systems Engineers design and implement firmware validation procedures for equipment & automation. Quality Engineers deal with the creation of a companys quality standards and testing systems to reflect efficiency, reliability and performance.
How GOKEN helps in career transformation in the Automotive Industry
We, at GOKEN, take pride in hiring entrepreneurial individuals who are motivated by challenging work and continue to invest in them through ongoing development initiatives. We provide initial training in our technical center for all associates, engage professional organizations for continued professional development and are committed to creating career growth opportunities for associates. Goken training classes are skills-focused, results driven and customizable, with an intent to eliminate months of on-the-job training. Whether onboarding new talent, upskilling existing associates, or setting up an associate development program, our method is the quickest path to a productive and effective workforce.