A November 2006 study on 'Staffing Asia-Pacific's Growing Networking Infrastructure,' conducted by research firm IDC across 12 countries, including India, says India will have a shortfall of nearly 1,37000 skilled networking professionals by 2009.

Job profile

The designations vary depending on the area of specialisation. In networking, for example, some designations can be network systems administrator, networking engineer, network manager, infrastructure manager and network systems analyst. For professionals with advanced networking skills, that could vary from systems architect to VoIP engineer/architect. Other job profiles include systems analyst, data warehousing consultants, e-commerce engineers, network designer/LAN service manager, and transcriptionists.

Payment structure

The remuneration varies depending on an individual's certification/specialisation and the kind of organisation s/he joins.

"For a low degree of specialisation, the starting salary could vary from Rs 120,000 to Rs 180,000 per year in a small organisation to Rs 240,000 to Rs 300,000 per month in an MNC," says Shikha. "Advanced specialisations can command a salary of up to Rs 200,000 a month, depending upon the years of experience. In case of international opportunities, plenty of which exist, the remuneration is even greater."

Job prospects

The IDC study says more than 55 per cent of India's shortfall by 2009 will be of professionals with advanced skills in the areas of network security and new network developments, such as IP telephony and wireless networking. Top three skill-set needs over the next 12 to 24 months, as per the study, are security skills, wireless network skills, and network design. Embedded/telecom, digital signal processing, hardware design, wireless communications, database management, and application software are other areas where professionals continue to be in demand.

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