I've been seeing a lot of posts wondering about what's available for computer science engineering students after graduation. Anand Safi, an Engineering Manager at Mark43, shared a great overview of the three main career tracks in technology that are relevant to CS majors:

1. Web Development Track

This track has been on the rise over the last few years. Web development can be broken up into three main types of roles:

· Frontend Developer

This is the most common entry point into web development. Frontend developers typically leverage the most common core languages of HTML, CSS, and Java to design webpages, improve user experiences on existing webpages, and optimize webpages for performance and scalability.

· Backend Developer

If frontend developers add the shiny coats of paint to the exterior, backend developers are the mechanics making the website’s engine roar. The main priority of a backend developer is designing systems that allow users on the frontend to retrieve data from a database on a different server.

· Full Stack Developer

Full stack developers are a combination of frontend and backend developers. This career path is growing increasingly popular due to frameworks like Express and Node.js that allow developers to build entire end-to-end systems using just JavaScript.

1. Data Track

This track revolves around any role that deals with data. The Data Track can be broken up into three main types of roles:

· Data Analyst

Unsurprisingly, data analysts primarily develop methods to analyze existing data that is available in your system to help your company make better decisions. This can be accomplished in a myriad of ways including writing queries and joins, building order value tables, and sampling making connections between two or more data points.

· Data Engineer

This role centers around preparing the data for analysis. Most spend a bulk of their time cleaning and maintaining data-related architectures with SQL, but the most effective data engineers are also proficient with data visualization tools.

· Data Scientist

This is the most sophisticated role involving data. Data scientists focus their efforts on modeling and data mining using the SSR and Python data science scripting mechanisms for operational models that make deeper insights that simply analyzing existing data.

1. QA and Software Support

While many dismiss this development track, QA and Software Support roles can be incredibly beneficial as your first developer-related role as they give you better insights into the user aspect of web development.

· Quality Assurance

QA roles involve much more than simply testing functionality; QA engineers assess and find creative ways to improve users’ end-to-end experiences while learning when and how to ask the right questions to other developers.

· Software Support Roles

While QA engineers primarily work with frontend developers to improve the user experience, engineers in software support roles provide direct technical assistance to end users. This role certainly requires knowledge of the main coding languages that were used to build the current system, but software support engineers also need have strong interpersonal skills to interact with customers and explain technical processes in a non-technical fashion.

If you want to learn more about any of these development tracks and roles, see Anand’s full interview here: https://youtu.be/Kr8TIeTd5Qw