Career paths

Research Professions Sector

Objectives and scope

The research stream aims to prepare engineering students for research careers in the public/private environment, by introducing them to the diversity of research careers, the major current themes, the challenges and the economic, human, ethical and societal implications of research.
The aim is to provide students with the knowledge and methodological tools to understand research professions (conferences, lab visits, round tables, workshops, etc.), to help students develop their own vision of research (exchanges with researchers, immersion in the lab, role-playing through individual or group tutored work) and to help students clarify their thesis project or their professional orientation (tutoring).

The fields covered range from the most fundamental research to applied R&D (industry and services), allowing career development in various environments: expertise, research project management, strategy, etc. or technological development and innovation.

Target professions

The skills acquired during the course and the research-oriented internship (mainly scientific communication, autonomy, creativity, teamwork in a complex and international environment) allow students to move towards a wide range of careers, both in fundamental research and in technology transfer and management, in particular:

• Teacher-researcher in an academic environment,
• Researcher in a research institution,
• Researcher or R&D engineer in a company,
• Valorization Officer,
• Scientific mediator,
• Research Manager (eventually).

Main activities

The activities of the Research sector are mainly based on role-playing supplemented by lessons providing the knowledge and methods used in the projects:

Contributions (Research knowledge, sharing of experiences, research methodologies): 30%

• Scientific and general public communication
• Laboratory visits and round tables
• Valorization of research
• History of inventions
• Controversy Analysis
• Ethics, responsibility
• Project and case study management

Role-playing (Case studies: scientific analysis and communication, ANR project, controversy workshops): 62%

• Case studies
• ANR project pre-proposal
• Elective activities (scientific writing, scientific animation, startup, teaching)
• Controversy analysis workshop
• Laboratory immersion

Project and professional orientation (Tutoring, pre-thesis workshop): 8%

Innovation & Intrapreneurship sector

Objectives

The objective of the program is to train engineers for the professions of innovation project manager, or intrapreneur, with a focus on but not limited to technological innovation. In these professions, engineers must have a broad scientific and technical culture, and master methodological tools relating to the different maturation phases of an innovation project (Ideation, Design, Prototyping, Innovation Marketing, Financing, Operational Launch). They must be able to initiate, then carry out an innovative project, in all its dimensions (technical, economic, market, social, etc.).
The core competency of the sector is the "transformation of the idea into economic and/or societal value", taking leadership, setting things in motion, transformation. We will therefore emphasize the link between innovation and market/customer: from the upstream phase (ideation/invention) to the downstream phases of marketing and life cycle (product/customer).

Why innovation?

The business world is constantly evolving: the arrival of digital technology, growing awareness of sustainable development, social changes, etc.
Companies must therefore constantly adapt and ensure that they do not get overtaken by the arrival of new technologies and/or new social and therefore market trends.
New players are constantly arriving on the market, sometimes seriously challenging the positions we thought were "established." Tesla, Uber, AirBnB, WeWork, BlaBlaCar, Booking, Amazon, etc., to name just a few of the most visible.

Monitoring and foresight allow companies to identify threats or opportunities early enough, and enrich strategic thinking and decisions.
The “innovation” teams stimulate and support the company’s businesses in their constant search for efficiency and transformation.
These same "innovation" teams detect new business opportunities and support "innovation" project teams whose objective may be to launch new products, or even more generally new activities, within or outside the company (subsidiaries, spin-offs, internal startups).

Complex Systems Design Course

Do you enjoy creating, working in a team, and producing something concrete together? Do you have a taste for technological challenges and are you fascinated by complex projects and objects with a strong scientific or technological dimension? The CSC program is for you!

Complex systems, what are we talking about? Large industrial or scientific facilities (ITER, EPR, etc.), space missions, aircraft, ships, autonomous and connected cars, blood collection, processing, and delivery services, relief services for populations in the event of a large-scale disaster, military theater management systems. And of course... living organisms.

Complex Systems Design Professions:

This covers all design engineering and innovation activities addressing the complete life cycle of a system. This therefore excludes fundamental or applied research activities and operational production management.

Target professions in the Complex Systems Design career path:
These are professions with a strong technical dimension, typically relating to a subset of a large system, but also addressing industrial, economic, marketing and management issues:

• Architect/System Engineer
• Product and/or process design engineer, development engineer
• Product manager
• R&D engineer, innovation project manager
• IVVQ Engineer (Integration/Verification/Validation/Qualification)...

The objective of the training: to train key players in systems design capable of integrating the entire field of complex systems engineering from the start of their careers. Engineers capable of:

• create new solutions and master their application,
• collaborate effectively with stakeholders in the design of a complex system
• contract and manage commitments

with all stakeholders (users, customers, marketers, manufacturers, financiers, competitors, distributors, sellers, etc.) in the development of a complex system.

Major Project Management program

Objectives and Scope

While all engineers work in project mode, large complex projects (technical complexity / Interfaces, convergences, multiple stakeholders, multi-geography, innovation, long duration) require advanced skills in project management and leading multidisciplinary teams in cross-functional mode.
In this context, the objective of the course is to train engineers so that they have a sufficient skills base to occupy, upon leaving the School, a project management position of low to medium complexity (or sub-project of a large project of high complexity), in an international context.

The objectives of the sector are:

• to acquire the fundamentals and then advanced techniques of project management
• to understand major projects in all their diversity
• to develop the behavioral skills necessary to start a career in project management
• to apply these skills in a highly international context

Target professions

• Project Manager,
• Work Package Manager (large projects),
• Member of a project team (Project Core Team),
• Manager or member of a Project Management Office (PMO),
• Project portfolio manager,
• Assistance to Project Management or Works,
• Planning Manager / “OPC” (Scheduling – Planning – Coordination),
• Project consultant

Operational Management sector

Objectives and Scope

What is Management? The art of leading men and women in their work. But today, everything is changing: how to respond to the challenges of the energy transition, what are the ways to retain the best in growing companies, how to lead major transformations in a large organization, how to respond to employees' search for meaning in their work or a demand for social integration, what are the levers for work-life balance? ... All these questions are part of current business news, and the manager is at the forefront of these issues!

To address this current context, the objective of this “100% soft skills” course is to prepare you to develop a managerial posture that aims to (re)place people at the heart of the company, and to go beyond traditional hierarchical approaches.

Knowing how to motivate, communicate, create cohesion, work in a team, give meaning, manage conflicts, interact in a multicultural mode, recruit, organize, delegate, train are the objectives of the sector which makes you aware of 3 fundamental skills:

• Knowing how to give meaning: and create commitment and collaboration
• Know How to Grow: for employability and continuous innovation
• Knowing How to Lead Change: to adapt the organization to uncertainties

Target professions in the sector

The program prepares you for any type of responsibility at the start of your career, which would include the following missions:

• Manage and motivate teams;
• Organize work, coordinate multiple areas or projects;
• Manage objectives, internal and external clients, or partners;
• Defend a system of collective values ​​and culture.

Examples of professions and sectors:

• Workshop manager, site coordinator, CTO, team manager, agency manager, department manager
• All professional sectors: Construction, Industries, Services, IT, Banking & Insurance, Social and Solidarity Economy, etc.

Given its non-sectoral approach, this course provides an introduction to soft skills and relational techniques (communicating, motivating, managing conflicts, negotiating, speaking in public or internationally, etc.), which are common to any professional role with “responsibility”.

Analysis and decision support professions sector

Objectives and Scope

The objective of the M2AD program is to train engineers for careers in analysis and decision support, whether technical, strategic, marketing or financial.
In these professions, engineers must establish diagnoses/analyses, make forecasts, and make recommendations, most often under heavy time pressure.
The core competence of the sector is "problem solving", diagnosis, in varied contexts ranging from technical expertise (technological audit for example) to business and corporate finance (strategy consulting, M&A for example).

Beyond that, the training of the sector is based on 2 axes:

• Develop analyst skills: mastery of problem-solving methods, synthetic communication skills (written and oral), sense of customer value
• Develop the soft skills and professional posture specific to the target professions in the sector: working under tight deadlines, leadership and professional interaction with decision-makers, etc.

Target professions in the sector

Like all career paths, the “Analysis and Decision Support Professions” program prepares a young graduate for their first position.
The target professions of the sector are by nature very multidisciplinary between technical fields and beyond, very often, with economic issues:

• Business analyst, Junior strategy consultant
• Marketing analyst, market analyst, marketing project manager
• Financial engineer, financial analyst (in M&A, PE, VC, etc.)
• Data scientist (in different functions in all types of sectors), actuary
• Auditor (“business”, financial or technological), IT security consultant

These jobs are found in all sectors (industry and services). However, for the same type of position, their titles can vary from one sector or even from one company to another.

Commercial and Business Development Department

Mission and objectives

In many industries served by engineers, success is measured by the engineer's ability to position their product or service offering and then sell it. The process often requires managing a "sales cycle" in which the engineer plays an active role. This means knowing how to manage the sales process from formulating the offer to negotiating the deal.

The objective of the program is to train engineers for commercial professions (from pre-sales) for sectors and companies where the approach is called "technical-commercial".

Target professions

Generally speaking, all sales and development professions, most often with a technical component. Business analysts and entrepreneurs are naturally also concerned with understanding and mastering revenue generation.

Some initial target professions: Technical sales engineer (sometimes also business engineer), business developer, sales manager, etc.
Key sectors: Construction, Aeronautics, Transport, Utilities, Telecommunications, more generally products and services to businesses, etc.

CentraleSupélec Entrepreneur Course

Objectives and scope

The FCSE trains engineers to become capable of creating a business (possibly without prior professional experience) and developing it over several years.
To become entrepreneurs, engineers must provide a solution to a market problem, with sufficient value creation to enable the organization to be sustainable.
They must learn to work in complex contexts, that is to say multidimensional and containing a degree of uncertainty.
The core competence of the sector is the permanent, adaptive and ever more in-depth discovery of the interdependencies between 8 key dimensions:

1. market understanding
2. strategy
3. finances
4. Selling
5. R&D and production
6. team and management
7. Legal & Intellectual Property
8. communication

We will learn how to move from the paradigm of accuracy (from your previous studies) to that of the strength of consistency, much more suited to today's complex world.

Target professions / opportunities

Target profession of the sector:

• Founder and business leader

Classic secondary trades : (secondary professions concern students who do not continue their creation after the last jury)

• Partner in a company not created by the student
• Head of a Business Unit of an existing company

And adjacently, even if it is not the initial objective:

• intrapreneur
• Product Manager

Statistics :

• 30 to 50% of students continue their project after graduation
• For the others :
  • No one has difficulty finding an exciting job.
  • A large number of people start an entrepreneurial adventure again after a few years in business.