Maaz Jukaku Introduction
Emertxe Information Technologies hosted “Embedded – Career Connect” at its Hyderabad office, part of the company’s ongoing series of sessions offering career guidance for engineering students. The session was held by Jayakumar Balasubramanian, Director of Emertxe, and he covered how the job market is evolving, where the AI will fit in the embedded engineering, and the practical pathway into the core engineering careers.
Emertxe has been in the EdTech industry since 2004, building training programs across Embedded Systems, Internet-of-Things, and Full-stack Web Development, with a strong focus on preparing students for a career in embedded systems from the ground up. The session opened by framing the two problems the company works on employability, through proper training programs for fresh engineers, and upskilling, for working professionals and corporate organizations. And walked students through Emertxe’s placement ecosystem, which spans semiconductor and device majors such as Qualcomm, NXP, Microchip, Infineon, Samsung, and Intel, automotive and industrial names including Bosch, Continental, Valeo, and Siemens, and IT and engineering services firms such as TCS, Wipro, HCL, and Tech Mahindra.
Industry Trends & Career Opportunities
Then the session outlined the four forces that are mostly reshaping embedded systems career opportunities and the broader job market for engineering graduates. AI which is replacing the lower-end, repetitive jobs even as it transforms how the products get built, geopolitics where shifting policies, tariffs, and political equations are changing how the global trade is done, the rise of the Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in India, which have moved from delivering routine services to driving high-end R&D, and India’s semiconductor push, aimed at building the complete products domestically rather than just components.
He explained this with figures on India’s GCC ecosystem, over 2,117 GCCs now operate in the country, employing 2.36 million professionals and generating close to $98.4 billion in annual industry revenue, with more than 1,200 of these centres now AI-enabled. On the semiconductor side, he then pointed to India’s semiconductor market reaching an estimated $100–110 billion by 2030, backed by a ₹1,27,500 crore outlay under the Semicon India Programme 2.0 and 12 approved manufacturing units, and roughly 85,000 engineers already trained against a four-year target. Together, these numbers point to the widening scope of embedded systems and semiconductor careers in India.
To make the shift concrete, He used a shirt-making analogy, where a worker who only does one step – cutting fabric, stitching, pressing, or packaging, is easily substituted and competes in a mass-hiring, low-entry-barrier, cost-driven market. Whereas a worker who can make the entire shirt commands a skill-based, innovation-driven market with a higher entry barrier and far greater value. Mapped onto the job market, mass-scale, factory-style hiring — the kind being squeezed by AI and geopolitical shifts – sits on one side, and skill-based hiring driven by GCCs and India’s semiconductor push, where growth is concentrated, sits on the other.
AI and the Tech View
The session then moved into where AI runs. He distinguished between decisions made in the cloud such as broader trajectory correction, weather response, and navigation updates and real-time, safety-critical decisions such as pedestrian or cyclist detection, which have to happen at the edge, locally on the device, because latency and connectivity don’t allow for a round trip to the cloud. He framed this through two roles AI now plays in connected products. As AI integrated into the product itself, handling perception, local decision-making, and vehicle control in real time and AI as a development co-pilot, assisting engineers with requirements analysis, coding, test generation, and documentation.
Why Starting Early Matters
A major part of the session was devoted to Start Early Course, why students can no longer afford to wait until their final year to build a job-ready skills. He also traced how Tier 2 and Tier 3 colleges once saw bulk hiring from large IT services firms for outsourced, repetitive roles work that is now shrinking or getting automated under the same AI and geopolitical pressures discussed earlier. And with respect to Campus placements, he noted, companies are moving away from the volume-based hiring to skill – based selection, with GCCs and domestic product companies now expecting graduates to own complex modules and contribute for the end-to-end product development rather than the isolated service components.
He illustrated the point with a familiar hostel-corridor exchange a student confident that “any company will hire me” after a quick 2-to-3-month course, followed by the same student later realizing that campus placements have dried up and that academic knowledge alone won’t carry them through – concluding that the only real fix is to start early and build real, hands-on skills. “Starting early and adapting to this change is non-negotiable,” is what he highlighted to the audience.
Pathway to Career in Core
He closed with a concrete map of the embedded systems career path, showing where this pathway leads. On a smart device, software splits into system software (core) and application software (IT), while hardware splits into chip design (VLSI) and board design — Emertxe’s own focus sits squarely in system software and the embedded/VLSI side of hardware. He also grouped the target employers into semiconductor companies, which build the chipset and reference board for the initial product development Qualcomm, NXP, Microchip, Infineon, among other device companies, which build the end products on top of those chipsets LG, Samsung, Boat, HP, Ather, and similar.
Then he also laid out a two-track path to get there. Firstly, the exposure to programming, hardware, operating systems, peripherals, interfacing, applications, and porting them across the platforms. Then have hands-on experience over the Linux systems, advanced C/C++, data structures and algorithms, microcontroller programming, Linux internals and TCP/IP networking, embedded Linux on ARM, and Qt programming. On the portfolio side, he insisted to have a good foundation in electronics knowledge, competitive coding practice on platforms like LeetCode and HackerRank, a minimum of 15 projects totalling around 20,000 lines of code, solid debugging ability, an active GitHub repository, and the ability to tell that story on LinkedIn.
For engineering students looking to develop these industry-relevant skills through structured, hands-on learning, Emertxe offers an Embedded Systems Course in Hyderabad focused on practical training and career preparation.
Looking Ahead
The Hyderabad session was one of several such sessions Emertxe runs for students exploring careers in core engineering, reflecting the company’s continued focus on connecting students directly with the skills, trends, and hiring realities shaping the industry. As Artificial Intelligence, Geopolitics, and India’s GCC and Semiconductor momentum continue to redraw the job market, sessions like this one aim to give students a head start and a clear, practical pathway – into the careers being created by that shift.
| Serial No. | Related News | Links |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Emertxe Leads Hands-On Edge AI Workshop at IEEE ICVTTS 2026 at GITAM Bengaluru | Click Here |
| 2. | Emertxe Marks 22 Years, Launches New Center in Hyderabad | Click Here |
| 3. | Emertxe at IESA Industry Connect 2026: Industrial Visit to Cadence, STMicro & NXP | Click Here |