The green tech, or environmental industry, is a significant niche in the United States and is only growing as society leans more toward sustainable development.
By Artur Meyster, Career Karma, used with permission.
People now believe green tech is the future if we want to keep Earth as our home and some tech professionals choose this field for that very reason. Working in green tech, people feel like they are making a difference and bringing positive change to our world. If you’re keen to contribute to this cause, below are the tech skills to land a job in green tech.
Environmental Science
This science studies the environmental problems we are having nowadays and tries to find solutions for them. The solutions have to be effective in eliminating pollution and maintaining safe environments for humans.
Environmental scientists usually work with companies to reduce their carbon footprints and implement sustainable practices. Because of climate change and global warming, the government has issued new regulations to try and control the situation. Environmental scientists and specialists are experts on these regulations and what each business has to do to reduce their impact.
To work as an environmental scientist, you must have a bachelor’s degree. Later you can specialize in different areas like restoration planners to clean polluted locations, climate change analysts to know how climate change is affecting our world, or industrial ecologists to work with companies in creating sustainable processes.
Software Engineers
Software engineers create, design and develop all the programs, software and applications that allow us to interact with our digital devices. They also are responsible for creating the middleware for all the systems and networks in different companies. And green tech isn’t any different; they need software to control machines. Anyone can become a software engineer with a bachelor’s degree or even by attending coding bootcamps.
From software to monitor solar panels to monitoring power consumption in electrical grids, there are a lot of job opportunities for software engineers in green tech. They also develop programs like Dialux to design sustainable and efficient lighting systems and applications to simulate many other environments and find green opportunities.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence is changing how we use technology to resolve many problems. Computers have been making our life more comfortable for some time now, but with AI, this has reached new limits. We now can “teach” machines to do specific jobs for us and then let them do it on their own. Not only that, but some branches of artificial intelligence allow computers to learn while they keep working in a task and improve with time.
The best application in the case of green tech is how AI helps us to see data in new ways. Artificial intelligence has many branches; you could be a machine learning engineer or a data scientist. Either way, you could make a powerful impact on the world with your job.
Before, environmental engineers and scientists had to dedicate a lot of time to collect data and analyze it. Now with AI, we can train a computer with a dataset about the best harvest time for rice and it will then be able to tell us what is the best time to harvest. AI can also provide insights like the best layouts for forest plantations or what agricultural practice will generate the lowest environmental impact in the next 10 years. The magic is that computers can go through more massive amounts of data that would take humans years.
Digital Marketing
This skill might come as a surprise, but digital marketers also have opportunities in the green tech industry. One of the main goals of green tech is to lessen the impact we are having on the environment and everyone has to participate. Marketing campaigns are an excellent way to influence society and if communities start learning about green technologies and their benefit, they will start using and demanding them.
Also, companies that produce green tech have to promote it like any other. And digital marketers are experts in presenting the right image. So, digital marketing is a great skill to enter the green tech industry.
