Are you fascinated by how Tesla cars self drive? Did you hear that Voyage: a self driving startup spun out of our very own Udacity has been acquired by Cruise? If this news excites you, you’re at the right place!
The boom in the self driving car industry has presented a juggernaut opportunity for qualified engineers adept in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and self-driving car engineering to innovate and steer this technology forward.
Sebastian Thrun, our founder is an ardent educator and innovator in the self driving space and therefore, we proudly offer educational courses to help our learners get equipped with the best modern skills in this technology at a fraction of Boot Camp fees.
The Self-driving Cars Industry in 2021
According to the Guardian, self driving cars would be the pioneers of driverless transportation in 2020. Despite the rapid pace of pushing boundaries by some great startups, it is evident that this technology is yet to be perfected.
As per current predictions, the global self driving car market is bound to be worth 60 billion USD by 2030 which is a steep rise from the 2018’s estimation of the industry being worth just 6 billion USD! Therefore, it doesn’t come as a surprise that we are about to witness a decade of rapid advancements in this relatively novel technology which would in turn present marvelous opportunities for skilled innovators and engineers in this space.
Yes, there is an evident scope of opportunities for self driving car engineers, but the obvious succeeding question here would be the earning potential in this role, right? To be clear and as observed in any professional field, the salaries would rely on the skills, expertise and the roles offered to engineers. The roles could range among research and development, programming machine learning components or building and testing the actual vehicles. As far as salaries for self-driving car engineers go, these will vary depending on skill level and experience. Some roles may be more focused on research and development, whereas other roles are more focused on the machine learning components or building and testing the actual vehicles which in turn could affect the salaries that would be offered.
Listen to one of Udacity’s rock star self-driving car engineer instructors, David Silver, answer burning questions about the industry.
What Skills Does a Self-Driving Car Engineer Need?
The expectation for self driving engineers would be to hold a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Electrical, Mechanical, System, Industrial Engineering, Robotics or related fields. Also, the engineers would be expected to be proficient in Python or C++ along with Linux. They should be able to write concise, maintainable and extensible codes and navigate lengthy codebases.
Apart from these educational requirements, employers tend to recruit skilled with relevant practical experience. Past experience in software engineering, machine learning, distributed machine learning and distributed computing would be a huge plus for candidates looking to get hired. Additionally, skills in autonomous driving, testing of control and estimation algorithms, traffic simulation would be desirable skills for potential candidates.
Talking about general competencies, strong verbal, written and interpersonal skills, curiosity and being a team player would definitely always be plus points.
Driving Into a New Career Path!
If this above discussion ignites the passion in you to become a top self driving engineer, here is we at Udacity can help you achieve this goal. You can get the best industry relevant skill sets by enrolling in Udacity Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree Program. In this Nanodegree program, you will learn how to apply computer vision and deep learning to automotive problems, like detecting lane lines, predicting steering angles and much more. You’ll also get to learn sensor fusion to efficiently filter relevant data from an array of multiple sensors in order to perceive and navigate your car’s environment. Finally, you’ll have an exciting opportunity to run your code in a simulation on Udacity’s very own self-driving car, Carla! Click here to know more about the detailed syllabus of this program. So what are you waiting for! Click here to enroll and START LEARNING!
