What IT jobs are there within the automotive industry?

What IT jobs are there within the automotive industry?

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TREMAiNE

Original Poster:

3,904 posts

148 months

Monday 8th February 2016
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First things first - MODS, please don't move this to to the Jobs and Employment sub-forums - this post isn't about me prospecting for a career (also, the thread will die an even quicker death in that sub).

I'm required to provide a presentation on Thursday, I won't go into details on what for/why etc but my question to all of you, what kind of IT jobs are available in the automotive industry?

What are the most common IT roles in the sector and on the whole, why are those roles so important in the industry?

e.g Web Development - A good website is important for a car manufacturer/PH/AutoTrader because... etc.

GroundEffect

13,819 posts

155 months

Monday 8th February 2016
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Well obviously network servers for CAD/CAE/Engineering data sharing. That's one of the most important.


delta0

2,334 posts

105 months

Monday 8th February 2016
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A new one is cloud servers. Particularly private ones.

v8250

2,724 posts

210 months

Monday 8th February 2016
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IS/IT for manufacturers networks...the industry relies heavily of computing/networking from multi-discipline R&D, core design, CFD, manufacture, production, automation, robotics, bespoke component production...the list is endless...even the HR dept requires IT.

The latest in car 'IT' would be titled Infotainment...plenty of manufacturers/suppliers out there going flat out on existing and nexgen technology; the type of 'tech' that's 1. designed by young techs who are trying to re-invent the wheel with functionality that's just not needed, 2. the same tech that's turning drivers into brainless non-thinking muppets, and 3. the same tech that constantly fails.

Good luck for Thursday...

Hamish Finn

476 posts

107 months

Monday 8th February 2016
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As far as manufacturers go, all website stuff is outsourced. So that's not really "automotive industry".

As mentioned above, CAD/CAE/Engineering is crucial. Data cannot be lost and everything must be absolutely up to date. But then a lot of CAD/CAE/Engineering is outsourced as well nowadays.

octane83

85 posts

147 months

Monday 8th February 2016
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Depends on whether you class it as 'IT' or not but the following are major resource intensive tasks in the industry:

--Embedded Systems- Used for writing codes into ECUs (base codes i.e the stuff that makes it work, not the 'tune' itself which is the sort of thing your local tuner would do, there is no IT involved in that essentially)
--Networking at a vehicle level- This involves the various BUSes around the vehicle, used to be CAN (high speed) and LIN (low speed), these days its FLEXRAY
--'In the Loop' testing- this involves putting the vehicle systems onto a giant breadboard and connecting all of them up like you would find in a vehicle, sometimes a skeleton of a real vehicle is used. This is used to test and analyse all the systems as though they were in the vehicle. There are lots of types o this, Hardware in the Loop, System In the Loop etc
--all other IT systems used by any other business, this includes networking, server management etc

Hope this helps.

TankRizzo

7,247 posts

192 months

Monday 8th February 2016
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You'll find a lot of motor IT jobs are outsourced to specialised companies, so the concept of IT jobs "in the industry" where big companies do all their own IT is a little smaller than you think.

Saying that, there are still vast numbers of roles.

Off the top of my head:

IT sales (selling products companies make which they might look to sell to other automotive companies). Think companies providing fleet management software, mileage capture, salary sacrifice, company car schemes and so on.
IT support/infrastructure - probably one of the biggest sectors. A big dealer network with international presence has thousands upon thousands of pieces of hardware, servers, load-balancers, telephony, audio-visual etc. Vital for a business looking to expand and open new showrooms in new markets.
Development - development, testing, release management, project management of products listed in point 1, plus retail websites for dealer networks, independent leasing & sales sites (think Lings Cars, Contract Hire & Leasing), motor journalism & review sites (you're on one requiring heavy IT involvement), parts network sites, order systems, stock management, etc etc. Car & Driving is a big site providing digital content to the motor industry, for example. Then you get into F1, research and development, IT support & development for engineering & production methods.
IT Project Management - of all areas of the motor IT world. IT Infrastructure PM is huge.
Business Analysis thereof.

Edit: Forgot telematics, massively growing at the moment.

Is this enough to be going on with? I've barely scratched the surface really, but the industry is pretty big.

Edited by TankRizzo on Monday 8th February 20:01

TankRizzo

7,247 posts

192 months

Monday 8th February 2016
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By the way, good luck in your interview wink

delta0

2,334 posts

105 months

Monday 8th February 2016
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swerni said:
Is that a job description?

Op design as already stated
Manufacturing are big user of SAP and also have large IT departments.
Automotive will have many of the same iT functions as any corporate.
Help desk
Telephony
Etc
Vaguely yes. I don't know the job title for someone who sets up and maintains cloud servers.

delta0

2,334 posts

105 months

Monday 8th February 2016
quotequote all
swerni said:
Without wanting to sound factious, you don't.
That's sort of the point of having it delivered as a service, a third part does this and they tend not to be vertical specific, only maybe in their sales function
Even for private servers? A lot of major engineering companies are beginning to adopt cloud and many go for private servers located on their site.

TREMAiNE

Original Poster:

3,904 posts

148 months

Monday 8th February 2016
quotequote all
Many thanks all!

Really didn't expect to get such good replies so quickly (thought the thread would die with one or two responses!).
Top stuff, keep it coming!

TankRizzo said:
By the way, good luck in your interview wink
Thank you biggrin 3rd (and hopefully final) interview on Thursday providing I nail this presentation!

TankRizzo

7,247 posts

192 months

Monday 8th February 2016
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TREMAiNE said:
Thank you biggrin 3rd (and hopefully final) interview on Thursday providing I nail this presentation!
Would you mind me asking which area of IT you are looking to focus on? You may get some better-targeted replies that way.

delta0

2,334 posts

105 months

Monday 8th February 2016
quotequote all
swerni said:
Off topic.

Forester came up with a term "cloud washing". It makes everything new and funky and seem different
If they are managing their own servers onsite or co located, it isn't a cloud service ( which for reference is a crap name which most hate )

Reality is most environments are a hybrid between managed, oursouces and some true cloud services ( salesforce, concur, office365 etc )
Interesting. Well that's fair enough. I'm just a user of the service. An engineer rather than IT.

TREMAiNE

Original Poster:

3,904 posts

148 months

Monday 8th February 2016
quotequote all
TankRizzo said:
Would you mind me asking which area of IT you are looking to focus on? You may get some better-targeted replies that way.
To be honest, I don't know.

I might as well disclose more about the interview though as that might help.

The job is for a Recruitment Consultant position for a company that specialises in IT recruitment and mainly focus' on:

PC / Network Support
Software Development
Web and Mobile Development
Design
Testing and QA
RDBMS / Business Intelligence
Senior Appointments


The pitch I need to give is to demonstrate how I will build my market, what particularly type of role I'd specialise in and how I would be a good client base. The aim is mainly for the interviewers to see how I think and what my logic is. I was advised to go use IT roles in the automotive industry purely because I know a bit about it already.

TankRizzo

7,247 posts

192 months

Monday 8th February 2016
quotequote all
TREMAiNE said:
To be honest, I don't know.

I might as well disclose more about the interview though as that might help.

The job is for a Recruitment Consultant position for a company that specialises in IT recruitment and mainly focus' on:

PC / Network Support
Software Development
Web and Mobile Development
Design
Testing and QA
RDBMS / Business Intelligence
Senior Appointments


The pitch I need to give is to demonstrate how I will build my market, what particularly type of role I'd specialise in and how I would be a good client base. The aim is mainly for the interviewers to see how I think and what my logic is. I was advised to go use IT roles in the automotive industry purely because I know a bit about it already.
I have quite a lot of contact with IT recruiters. They don't tend to be industry-based (at least the ones who contact me), pushing clients from all sorts of different industries. Of course, things like F1, journalism and so on are going to involve prior experience, no doubt about it, but you will mostly find the IT side of the industry is more concerned with whether someone has the technical skills to do the job, not so much previous industry experience. It's always beneficial but not vital in a lot of cases. Dev is dev, PMs are PMs and so on.

If you want to drill down to a few areas where it's specifically industry-related then I think things like F1 would be a good bet.

TREMAiNE

Original Poster:

3,904 posts

148 months

Monday 8th February 2016
quotequote all
TankRizzo said:
...
The company itself doesn't specialise in an industry but for the purposes of my presentation they want me to focus on an industry.

Awesome, I will focus at roles within F1 then - I best start my research! nerd

Wilmslowboy

4,188 posts

205 months

Monday 8th February 2016
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I lead IT for a very large auto retailer...I consider we are a "retailer" and not automotive industry

In very simple terms you can split the industry into two

retail/service
manufacture/supply chain

The former is essentially the same as any other retail business - so every single part of traditional IT plus more on CRM/ contact centres, marketing/campaign management, EPOS, WAN, online, BI, analytics, etc etc

The other side is typical manufacture, supply chain, ERP, brand/ marketing solutions etc etc (plus traditional IT)...lots more stuff involving tech in the cars (connected car, media, nav etc)


The industry (both parts) is going through a revolution - experience is king, led by better people and better technology ... I am from outside the industry , almost everyone we are hiring is also from outside the industry (from salespeople, head of IT to directors) and we (and no doubt many others ) are increasing IT budgets massively.....

Kudos

2,672 posts

173 months

Monday 8th February 2016
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Big data analytics for performance tuning

swamp

991 posts

188 months

Monday 8th February 2016
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Maybe more interesting to know what the car companies don't do or can't do in IT:

Can Germany's manufacturers do digital?



Engineer1

10,486 posts

208 months

Monday 8th February 2016
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On the CAD /CAE side Dasault have tied a good chunk up with Enovia, and forcing the tier suppliers into the CATIA ecosystem, to supply HUM, JLR, VW etc you need CATIA V5 at a specifc level.