An oil major finds oil, gets it out of the ground, refines it and sells it. It does all of that with more engineers per barrel than almost any business on earth. Software has always been part of that engineering:
- the seismic model, which uses sound waves sent into the ground to show where oil may be
- the reservoir simulation, which models how oil and gas will flow underground
- the control system that runs a drilling platform
For most of the industry's history, the majors bought that software from a few specialist firms, rather than writing it themselves.
This Parent Industry covers two kinds of company:
Only foreign companies are covered here. The energy industry itself, from the power station to the oilfield's accounts, is explained in the product-companies collection. "Where this industry is explained", at the end, says where.
The centres here are recent. Most opened in the last five years. And the arc runs in an unusual order. The oilfield-services firms sell software as a product, so their centres work like software companies, at stage 6. The majors' own centres mostly run their business systems. The GCCs here do three kinds of work:
- Running the major's own systems (stage 1)
- Building the major's apps and platforms (stage 3)
- Products across many lines (stage 6)
Every centre named here has posted software engineering jobs in India. Companies not placed under a mandate are listed at the end, in The names with a desk here.
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Six more sections are on this page: Why the oil majors came, Running the major's own systems, Building the major's apps and platforms, Products across many lines, The names with a desk here, and Where this industry is explained. Sign in to read them here, in full.
Continue with Google- Why the oil majors came
- Running the major's own systems
- Building the major's apps and platforms
- Products across many lines
- The names with a desk here
- Where this industry is explained
They came late, and for the engineers. The majors ran their technology from Houston, London and The Hague for a century. They handed the routine part of it to Indian IT services firms, rather than to centres of their own.
That changed between 2017 and 2023, when most of the majors decided to build their own technology centres in India. These centres would do engineering, not just support: first the business platforms, then data and digital products. Only Bengaluru and Pune could supply engineers at that scale.
The oilfield-services firms came for the same engineers. Their business is selling engineering and software to the majors, so they put their software product development here.
The companies are:
The majors' centres are mostly in Bengaluru. The two largest centres here are in Pune.
For the majors themselves, this is the main stage. An oil major's real product is the barrel of oil, and the decision of where to drill for it. Neither is made in a business-systems centre.
Only one major has a centre with this mandate.
This is the only Parent Industry where this stage leads. The centres work like a software company with several product lines, because for an oilfield-services firm, software is something it sells.
These companies are not placed under a mandate here:
TotalEnergies and Equinor are not covered in this Parent Industry. Baker Hughes, the third large oilfield-services firm, is covered as an equipment maker in the product-companies collection.
Industry Vertical 40, Energy and climate tech, in the product-companies collection, explains what these companies do:
The majors here buy much of that software.
That is the energy GCC: oil majors that run their business systems from India, and oilfield-services firms that build their software products here.
Who these centres hire, role by role, is on the collection's role pages for Java backend and full-stack engineers, cloud and DevOps engineers, data engineers, test engineers, frontend and mobile engineers, .NET engineers, GenAI engineers and the other roles.