'Make in India' expands scope for instrumentation engineers

After passing the entrance test, students often face the real test of character in choosing the branch of engineering course. While going with the trends and glamour, they sometimes overlook certain streams which have good potential. One such avenue is Instrumentation engineering.

Any manufacturing demands Automation which requires sensing, monitoring and controlling of variables. With the buzz of 'Make in India' gathering pace and growing employment opportunities in the horizon, it's time students took a serious note of it. India is definitely in the radar when it comes to manufacturing. Areas like factory automation, process automation, system engineering, manufacturing industries (design, testing, and quality control), consultants (solution providers / turnkey projects), embedded systems and electronic circuit design covers the ambit of job for instrumentation engineering. Exposure to the latest technologies of Distributed Control System (DCS), Programmable Logic Controllers and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) and virtual instrumentation gives an extra edge to instrumentation students.

The interdisciplinary nature of the course gives opportunities in various other exciting fields of Biomedical, Nuclear and Aerospace applications also. This course stands out because it gives students a good combination of hardware and software domains and also gives a very good base in electrical, electronic and control fields. After completing the graduation and post-graduation, they can work as control engineers to provide leadership in the process, product development and support.

Going by the track record of many colleges, the graduates get pay packages between Rs 3 and 5 lakh per annum. Over the past three years, the placement at VES Institute of Technology has been 73% in instrumentation, while 10% have opted for software jobs. Out of the total job offers made in the last three years 62% has been in the core instrumentation field.

Some of the key recruiters were Aker Solutions, Chemtex, G S Consultancy, Jacob Engineering, Larsen and Toubro Ltd., Reliance industries Ltd. Petrofac Ltd, Siemens Ltd, Tata Consultancy Engineers, Tata Power, Tecnimont ICB, Toyo Engineering, UHDE India Ltd, Chemtrols and Emerson.

Instrumentation jobs are not only in demand within the country but it is also high in the Gulf countries, because of high concentration of the oil and natural gas firms.

Dr. (Mrs.) Jayalekshmi Nair, Principal, VES Institute of Technology