On March 4, 2022, the Computer Science Education Department held an activity in the form of a stadium generale with the theme “Challenges & Opportunities as Mobile App Engineer” and invited one of the Computer Science Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia alumni who is now working at tiket.com as a Software Engineer, namely Gilang Abdul Aziz, S. Kom. as a speaker.

This activity was guided by Dr, Yudi Wibisono, M.T. as moderator and attended by students and academicians of the Computer Science Education Department, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia.

The activity started at 15.45 WIB using the Zoom conference media and was divided into two different sessions, namely a presentation session and a question and answer session. In the first session, Gilang talked about the position of a Mobile App Engineer in Indonesia, starting with the many job vacancies for Mobile App Engineers, the programming language needed, and what a Mobile App Engineer would do. In addition, Gilang also thoroughly explores the challenges and opportunities that will be accepted as a Mobile App Engineer.

Figure 1. Presentation by speaker

In the second session, activities were more focused on questions and answers between the speakers and the audience. Even though it was conducted online, the enthusiasm of the participants was still felt. It can be seen by many questions given to the informants regarding the mobile app Engineer. One of them was a question from Muhammad Iqbal Zain who asked about how to qualify when applying for jobs in big companies such as unicorns or decacorns.

According to Gilang, in the field of Mobile App, there are advantages that can be utilized to make someone’s portfolio more weighty. The advantage is that you can create your own mobile app and can publish it on the app store. With so many applications being created and published on the app store and even getting good reviews from users, it will help when the company does portfolio selection.

Gilang provides tips for students of the Computer Science Education Department who want to be successful in their preferred fields, especially to become Mobile App Engineers. Students have to start determining specializations while studying so they can explore more and be better prepared to work in that field later. With the specialization they want to explore, students can develop strategies as early as possible to achieve those goals. A small example of the strategy is to create study groups between students who like a field. With this group, it is hoped that it will inspire them to study much better in their preferred field.

Figure 2. The Data Shows The Company’s Demand for Mobile App Engineers

In addition, gain experience on working a project in a preferred field, one of which is by participating in internships. Students can start looking for internship vacancies in IT companies while studying. There is a lot of knowledge and experience gained from internships, because they can be directly involved in an actual work project so that their abilities will be honed. Gilang emphasized that it is rare for companies to only see transcripts of job applicants, usually, companies will ask applicants to apply their abilities to a given problem so that it will be seen that the applicant has the ability or not.

Furthermore, Gilang conveyed a career path as a software engineer, namely first becoming a junior engineer (fresh graduate) with an average monthly salary of 6-8 million rupiah. Next are software engineers, then senior engineers with an average monthly income of around 20-40 million rupiah, and principal engineers.

Figure 3. Role and Position of Mobile App Engineer in a team

This Public Lecture is intended for all academics of the Computer Science Education Department. With this public lecture, it is hoped that the students of the Computer Science Education Department will know about the challenges and opportunities as a Mobile App Engineer. In addition, students are expected to be able to prepare themselves early if they want a career as a Mobile App Engineer.

Writer: Muhammad Cahya