Jobs in Tech 101

Product Development

Do you love building products, automating efficiently, squashing problems, and bending software to do your bidding?

Product Development

Product Development might be the field for you if:

Product development professionals have strong reasoning abilities and enjoy critical thinking. They are curious about how things work and have a tenacity for solving problems. Product developers are voracious learners who enjoy challenging tasks, and they’re not afraid to take on something new.

Sound interesting? Here are some occupations in this field:

Software Engineer

Software engineers write, edit and test programs and may specialize in a few areas of development, such as networks, operating systems, databases or applications, and each area requires fluency in its own set of computer languages and development environments.

DevOps Engineer

DevOps engineers work with software developers, system operators and other tech staff to oversee code releases. They build and maintain tools for deployment, monitoring and operations, and troubleshoot and resolve issues in dev, test and production environments.

Quality Assurance Engineer

Quality assurance engineers are responsible for assessing the quality of specifications and technical design documents in order to ensure timely, relevant and meaningful feedback. They are involved in planning and implementing strategies for quality management and testing.

Product Manager

Product managers define consumer needs and business objectives, translating them into viable, innovative products. They combine business knowledge, technology and design to discover a product that is viable, feasible and usable.

A Software Engineer's day might include:

9:00 AM

Attend the morning scrum meeting and chat about yesterday's progress and today's goals toward our projects

Check in with my project manager and discuss objectives to accomplish during the next sprint period

12:00 PM

With no afternoon meetings, get ready to code

Open and manage several tickets for coding issues that were identified in our project management system.

6:00 PM

Polish up our code and close out tickets in our project management system before I head out the door.

9:00 AM

Attend the morning scrum meeting and chat about yesterday's progress and today's goals toward our projects

Check in with my project manager and discuss objectives to accomplish during the next sprint period

12:00 PM

With no afternoon meetings, get ready to code

Open and manage several tickets for coding issues that were identified in our project management system.

6:00 PM

Polish up our code and close out tickets in our project management system before I head out the door.

You could work at a company like:

Meet Lindsay Siovaila, Lead Solutions Developer at Salesforce

Lindsay's career path took her from creative design to full-stack developer all while working for the same company -- Salesforce. Read about her role as a community leader in tech in this post.

Meet Kavitha Nambiar, Software Developer at MicroMetl Corporation

Kavitha's job in tech is as a software developer in Indianapolis. Read about a day in her life and see her recommendations for learning how to code and program.

Michael Hockerman chose incredible Indy over West Coast wow

Michael had several opportunities upon graduation, but even the west coast couldn't lure him away for long. Read his story and find out how Xtern and Indy Tech Fellowship kept this Purdue grad working in Indiana tech.

Paula Romero chooses Indy Tech Fellowship to launch career

Paula Romero’s career path to the Indy Tech Fellowship has been nothing if not eventful. Paula was born in Maracay, Venezuela and moved to A Estrada, Spain when she was 11. At 16, she came to Indiana as a foreign exchange student, and at 18, she moved to Indiana for college. Beginning her college career […]

Meet Virginie Adams, Product Manager at MetaCX

Virginie has always been interested in math and engineering. After obtaining her degrees from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, she began working at ExactTarget, and her career propelled from there.

Meet Rachel Kilroy, Sr. Product Manager at PERQ

Rachel began as a developer and was presented with a career path choice to continue down a technical path or transition to a business path. From Kraft Foods in Wisconsin to PERQ in Indianapolis, read Rachel's story to learn about her career in tech.

Educational requirements could include:

An undergraduate degree in computer science, math, computer engineering, or software engineering is preferred, and a self-taught or intensive bootcamp-taught programming and project experience is a plus.

Check out the Xtern program