Code and tech jobs often go hand-in-hand. Whether you want to work in development, software testing, system administration or even helpdesk support, the ability to read and write code at least occasionally is usually part of the job description. But this doesn’t mean you need to learn how to code to work at a tech company. Here’s a list of non-coding tech jobs.
1. Technical Recruiter
Recruiters in the tech industry are often the target of derision, due partly to the assumption that they don’t understand the roles they are recruiting for.
That may be true in some cases: Many recruiters have educational backgrounds in fields like human resources and psychology, not tech.
The good news is that if you have actual technical skills related to the fields you are recruiting for, you can stand out by positioning yourself as a technical recruiter who has a better understanding of the technical job market than the typical recruiter. You won’t have to code, but you’ll still get to make use of your technical skills by helping companies find and hire other people who have tech skills.
2. Technical Writer
Similarly, writers are a dime a dozen, but relatively few writers have the technical chops necessary to write persuasively and efficiently about technically dense topics.
If you do have those skills, and you also enjoy writing, technical writing might be up your alley.
Technical writing may occasionally require writing small amounts of code to demonstrate how a tool works or create a tutorial. But, in many cases, you can find the code in documentation or get from an engineer. Technical writing is in essence a non-coding tech job, or very close to it.
3. Sales Engineer
Companies that sell technical products also need salespeople who have a deep understanding of those products. If you are into sales and also possess the technical depth required to speak compellingly about how a technical product or service works, you can be a sales engineer who-- in most cases--will never need to write a line of code.
4. Project Manager
Project management is another non-coding tech job, but it’s also one that requires technical skills related to a specific product or service. Developers write the code, and project managers help ensure that the developers stay focused, coordinated and on schedule. The role could be for you if you’re organized and like managing people.
5. Product Manager
If you’ve ever found yourself fuming over features that a technical product lacks, or scratching your head about why a company decided to evolve a product in a certain way, the product manager could be a role for you. Product managers help companies define market needs for products and align product development with them. Product manager is usually a non-coding role, but it does require technical expertise in how products work.
6. UI/UX Designer (sometimes)
Helping to plan, assess and optimize user interfaces (UI) and the user experience (UX) is a role that sometimes requires coding skills. Building a UI may necessitate knowledge of languages like CSS, for example.
However, the extent to which you’ll have to code is often limited: You’ll need to know only a few languages, and many design tasks can be handled through interfaces that do the coding for you. So, depending on the specifics of the job, working in UI/UX may require minimal coding.
Conclusion: Non-Coding Tech Jobs Are a Thing
Depending on which other skills you bring to the table--such as writing, managing other people or aligning product features with business needs--there are a variety of roles that will allow you to work in tech while writing little or no code. You may work very close to code, and you may sometimes be asked to produce a bit of code yourself, but no one will expect you to code like a developer or IT engineer in these roles.
