Machine Learning domain offers the trendiest jobs today. India has plenty of opportunities and demand in this field. According to a survey, a machine learning engineer in India gets an annual pay of about 13 lakhs. According to a recent June 2019 Glassdoor survey on salaries, the national average salary for a Machine Learning Scientist is ₹40,99,326 in India.

There are a number of different career paths that come with it. Here are some of the top and the most common ones:

1. Data Scientist

Role: Data scientists are mainly involved in data cleaning and modeling. Their job is to make use of the available data and forecast based on the past data or discover useful information out of it. The position expects collaborates with others in the related field in the company, to drive the best possible insight. According to a 2019 survey by Analytics India Magazine, Python was the most popular language for data science practitioners. Over 75 percent of respondents said that it was crucial for job seekers to Python to get a job in this field.

Skill Requirements: Applying to data scientist position will require the candidate to have a good background of statistics, in addition to having a good programming background, mostly in Python. Other popular languages are R and SQL since these languages have good support of statistics. They have many machine learning applications in their work.

2. Computational Linguist/NLP Engineer

Role: Computers have been used for language teaching since the 1960s. The voice recognition, speech to text and many others used by everyone today in everyday lives have machine learning at its backbone. Computers learn to understand spoken languages through computational linguistics and learn from it as well with the aid of patterns in speech. A job role of a computational linguist or an NLP engineer is to work on these applications. Some other applications in this area are in automated scoring of non-native responses in language tests like GRE and TOEFL, computer-assisted spoken language tutoring like elsaspeak.com, mobile-based language learning app development like Duolingo, grammar checkers such as Grammarly and in educational data mining.

Skill Requirements: Apart from the machine learning skills, this job requires a strong understanding of the syntax, spelling, and grammar of at least the language that the role requires.

3. Machine Learning Engineer

Role: A machine learning engineer is responsible for the design and development of machine learning systems, by using appropriate algorithms and tools. ML engineers do data modeling and evaluation. The engineers shape and build efficient self-learning applications by performing statistical analysis and fine-tuning using test results. Their job requires them to train and retrain systems when necessary.

Skill Requirements: An ML engineer needs to be good with statistics and programming. He should be good with understanding data structures, data modeling and software architecture. Good knowledge of mathematics, probability, statistics and algorithms is necessary for this job role. Coding in Python, Java and R is necessary.

4. Software Engineer/Software Developer In Machine Learning/AI

Role: These roles need strong coding skills to develop algorithms. They create flow charts, diagrams and models, and provide documentation for the systems to help with its maintenance. They are also responsible to check if the upgrades work properly. Their work involves deciding how the given system will need to work taking the various parts and components into consideration.

Skill Requirements: This job role mostly requires a good understanding of data structures, and the various computer architecture concepts like distributed processing, memory caches is important. It needs skills to design and develop software programs for purposes like that of operating systems, network distribution and must know how to implement algorithms for the systems to perform specific functions. It also mostly requires one to be proficient with Java, C++, C languages, apart from an understanding of statistics and probability.

5. Human-centred Machine Learning Designer

Role: The branch of machine learning in which machine learning algorithms that revolve mainly around humans are called human-centred machine learning. The job role of a human-centred machine learning designer revolves around creating a pattern out of the available data so that machines learn according to individual information. This avoids the extra task of designing algorithms and systems to manually account for every user. This is an example where YouTube suggests videos based on the user’s history on YouTube. Examining machine learning from a human-centred perspective includes recognising this human behaviour and building workflows based on human working practices and exploring the co-adaptation of humans and systems.

Skill Requirements: A good understanding of machine learning and programming skills in Python, R and Java are key requirements for this job role.