“Though aircraft maintenance is a separate specialisation and requires qualifying through licensing exams conducted by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), aeronautical engineers would have covered all the theory portions of these exams and can take on these exams after some practical training.”
IT companies like TCS, Infosys and Wipro regularly recruit aerospace engineers. In addition, aerospace engineers can find jobs in automobile, construction and manufacturing companies. Aerospace students even find jobs in finance and oil MNCs. Most of these non-core jobs earn much higher pay and are preferred by the students, particularly undergraduate students.
Presently, only a few companies in India work in the field of aeronautics. As a consequence, the number of jobs in the core sector is relatively less. Also, many of these jobs are related to R&D, where higher qualification and experience are preferred. As a result, many of the graduates take up jobs that are neither in the core sectors nor related to the core field. However, some private Indian companies are coming up and various foreign and multinational companies are trying to expand their work in the field of aerospace in India. So the number of jobs will definitely increase in the near future.
Dr M.R. Patkar, director, Indian Institute for Aeronautical Engineering and Information Technology (IIAEIT), Pune, too brushes aside misconceptions that aerospace/aeronautical engineers get jobs only in airlines or aircraft-manufacturing units. “The aerospace engineers from our institute have joined IT companies and also the knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) companies. IT companies specialising in this domain need aerospace engineers, so do other aircraft-related outsourcing companies,” he shares.
Money matters
This field has enough provisions for not only learning but also earning well. The starting salary for a fresher is typically Rs 300,000-500,000 per annum with impressive year-to-year salary hikes.
Dr Patkar elaborates, “As far as remunerations are concerned, the aerospace engineers would get high-end jobs and hence higher salaries than any other discipline of engineering. We could get the jobs to the fresher to the tune of Rs 300,000 per annum. The rise in this discipline is very high in the private sector.”
Prof. Sriram agrees, “Government/ public-sector companies (HAL, ISRO, etc) offer standard pay packages in the Rs 300,000-500,000 per annum range at the entry level, while private entities may offer one-and-a-half to twice this. With five-ten years of experience, the salary ranges are around one-and-ahalf to double of these figures.”
The variation depends on several factors like the nature of the organisation and your competency level.
M.M.T. Nambi, vice president-aviation and business consulting at Ramco Systems, says, “The compensation package is dependent on the domain knowledge and nature of experience that the person carries and will be above Rs 600,000 for a person having over four-six years of experience.”
Make yourself industry-ready
Now that you have received enough boosters about the opportunities to be grabbed in the aerospace field, it’s time to learn how to get an edge over others in the job market and hone your employable skills accordingly.
Although experienced applicants are always preferred by the companies in aerospace, recruiters, while hiring a fresher, usually look for the technical and problem-solving skills of the student. In general, core companies look for the basic knowledge and understanding of the subject matter and IT companies look for coding skills and aptitude.
As a student of aerospace engineering, you will be involved in all aspects of aeronautics and related areas like automobiles, wind energy, power generation, ship and submarine design, non-destructive and construction works. You will also need to specialise in one of the many areas such as aerodynamics (theo¬retical aerodynamics, experimental aerodynamics and computational fluid dynamics), propulsion, flight mechan¬ics, orbital mechanics, structures (struc¬tural mechanics, structural dynamics, computational structural mechanics and vibration), stability, control and guidance, and aeroelasticity. All these specialisatons are usually referred to as mechanical streams of aeronautical engineering. Specialisation in automatic control and avionics comes under electronics stream.
Electronics has become an inherent part of today’s aircrafts and spacecrafts, and provides crucial state information like position, orientation and velocity, which is essential for safe operation of the craft. Avionics basically stands for aviation electronics, though the term is not limited to just aviation anymore and is extended to rockets, spacecraft, etc. Avionics deals with the electronic systems of aircrafts used for navigation, guidance and communication.The subject matter comes under electronics communication. (At IIT Kharagpur, the subject is offered as an elective to senior undergraduate students.)
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“The aerospace engineers from our institute have joined IT companies and also the
knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) companies.”
— Dr M.R. Patkar, director, Indian Institute for Aeronautical Engineering and Information Technology (IIAEIT), Pune
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Hence, while studying for this branch of engineering, you have an opportunity to accumulate knowledge which can be used in various diversified industries. It’s no surprise that aerospace engineers can and do fit in various industries besides those devoted to aeronautics, astronautics and space.
However, you obviously need to know what’s in demand there.
Prof. Sinhamahapatra informs, “No formal specialisation is offered by IIT Kharagpur in aerospace engineering but companies look for people who are experts in tackling problems related to one or more of the following fields: computational fluid dynamics, aerodynamics, computational structural analysis, aircraft structures, control and guidance, and propulsion systems.”
On the other hand, Prof. Sriram of IIT Madras says, “Aerospace is a high-tech and fast-changing field, so one needs to be always abreast of the global technology advances in the field. Design and analysis jobs involve abstract modelling and complex calculations, so one needs to be very comfortable with those and a strong mathematics background is necessary too. Also, due to the high-tech nature of the field, creative thinking is a skill that is often sought.”
Another professor from IIT Bombay says: “If recruiters are from the core sector, they primarily look for strong fundamentals and also in some cases knowledge in the specialisation including use of certain specialised tools (usually software).”
But remember hard skills alone won’t take you anywhere. Apart from technical knowledge, most companies prefer candidates who have mastered some soft skills, particularly communication skills. They also go for people who are proactive, good team players, ready to accept challenges and grasp things quickly. It is these basic qualities that may at times set one candidate apart from the other.
Since companies have specialised job requirements that cannot be taught in a typical classroom (lack of commonality), it is a standard practice to recruit trainees. During the training, the employees are exposed to the various facets of the company’s activities and also gauged for suitability to work on these activities. They are then posted as engineers and subsequently as lead engineers/project engineers and then onto more management-oriented roles.
“We at Ramco Systems look for a fairly good understanding of aircraft maintenance and engineering principles, process orientation (ability to think process), and good written and oral communication skills,” adds Nambi.
To sum it up, companies, while recruiting, look at the combination of a consistent academic record, deep understanding of the subject matter and good communications skills.
I know hypermesh and Nastran software but i want a industrial training on the aeronautical field base on this software. My qualification is B. E aeronautical engineering.