Career Counselling

Instrumentation Engineer

Description

Instrumentation engineering is an inter-disciplinary branch that includes study of electrical, chemical, electronics as well as computer engineering. Instrumentation and control engineers design manufacture and fix snags in devices or systems that are used to measure or control physical quantities such as temperature, pressure and flow.

Requirement

Take science with physics, chemistry and maths at the plus two level. Instrumentation engineering is available as BTech or BE programmes, entry to which is normally through a written test. The skills required to be in this field are:

• The person must be good at maths and physics
• Skilled at handling instruments and software
• They should have leadership qualities
• They should be adept at trouble-shooting

Job Prospects

Initially, the median pay of instrumentation engineers is Rs. 1 lakh to Rs. 2.2 lakh a year. The average pay of a graduate engineer — regardless of the branch — is Rs. 6.5 lakh per annum

Pros & Cons

• Your wider knowledge base gives you an edge over mechanical or electrical engineers in a plant
• Money is good
• Highly responsible role — if the instrumentation system fails, the whole plant will grind to a halt 
• Your health could be affected because of high noise and temperature levels at manufacturing plants
• If things go wrong at work, you are required to be on call 24X7