48, mechanical engineering background 30years experience, looking for a change of career really so any course where it would be viable to start work straight after completion.
I've had a LTD. co. for the last few years, going from place to place contracting and would like to start contracting in the IT business if possible.
What qualifications would potential employers be looking for?
It depends what you want to do in IT, just saying IT is a bit vague and you could probably do with sharing more details about your background/qualifications.
You say mechanical engineering background does that mean to imply that you have a BEng/MEng already and presumably with that sort of experience you've presumably had your CEng status for a while too and several years managing teams/projects etc..?
I mean an obvious transition given your age/experience is to become a project manager as already suggested above - assuming you've already got extensive experience managing projects albeit in a different sector this could be an easy move. The PM related qualifications are a bit of a joke and can be passed with minimal study time but unlike some new grad trying to break into PM roles straight out of uni you'll presumably already have several years relevant project experience under your belt. Being a PM doesn't really require significant domain knowledge thus is probably the easiest transition given your background.
If you've got some funds available then you could perhaps go for something like this assuming your undergrad degree was fairly decent and you've got some good experience behind you from your current field:
https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/graduate/courses/msc-major-programme-management?wssl=1
That should give you much more than any of the short courses the typical PM gets sent on and the brand name will get you plenty interviews, you'll likely find (as with most prestigious universities) plenty of big name companies recruiting from the course school too. Get something like that under your belt and perhaps a stint at a big name consultancy and you could be looking at some sweet daily rates.
Alternatively if you're looking at other areas you could perhaps look at a specialised masters degree, you can do specialised degrees in say security or networking or data science/ML. Presumably with an engineering background you've got some programming experience in say Matlab and know your multivariate calculus, linear algebra reasonably well?
I certainly wouldn't bother doing an undergrad in CS at your age, if you want that sort of background then there are MSc CS degrees aimed at non-CS grads that basically teach you the core curriculum of an undergrad CS degree anyway - that would save you a lot of time... 1 year full time/2 years part time vs 3 years full time/4-6 years part time.
), and then do some of the Microsoft exams, but it can be quite a difficult field to break into with no experience, and you'll be unlikely to get any kind of decent contract with just a certificate and nothing to back that up.
