Someone is calling every cue on that award show. Someone programmed every lighting look. Someone rigged the truss above the stage. None of those are “event manager” jobs — and most event management courses in India don’t train for any of them.
Watch any major Indian award show and your eyes go to the host, the performers, the red carpet. What you don’t see is the technical production team running the entire physical show from the wings: a full crew of specialised, paid roles that most event management theory never mentions. This is the part of the events industry that’s invisible on screen and completely misunderstood off it — and it’s also where some of the most genuine, hireable jobs in Indian live events actually sit.
If you’ve finished an event management course and are still hunting for a real job, this is worth reading slowly. The technical production team at an award show isn’t one generalist “production person.” It’s eight distinct roles, each with its own skill set, its own hiring pipeline, and — unlike a lot of vague “event coordinator” openings — its own clear path to a paycheck.
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Who’s Actually on the Technical Production Team at an Award Show?
A technical production team is bigger than most people assume, and every role on it is hired separately. On a major Indian award show, you’ll typically find these functions on the technical side:
- A show caller running the live cue-to-cue
- An AV/lighting producer overseeing the entire technical picture
- A lighting designer building the visual concept
- A lighting programmer or operator running the console live
- An audio A1 managing the live mix
- A video and LED engineer handling screens and content playback
- Riggers building and certifying the overhead truss
- A power and electrics technician managing the show’s entire electrical load
Each of these is a distinct, hireable job in India’s live events industry — not a task one “production executive” handles on the side. That distinction matters more than it sounds, because it’s exactly what event management courses don’t teach and exactly what technical production training does.
This is also the layer of the industry IIED has written about before, in our guide on what technical production in events actually means — this post goes one level deeper, into the specific roles on a live show floor.
Why This Matters If You’re Job-Hunting Right Now
If you’ve applied to production companies and gotten nowhere, it’s often not because you lack passion or effort. It’s because the job you’re applying for — “technical production” — is really eight different jobs, and most applicants (and most courses) only prepare candidates for the planning and coordination side. Production houses aren’t short on people who can make a run-of-show document. They’re short on people who can actually operate a lighting console, read a rigging plot, or call a live cue without missing a beat.
The Show Caller: The Job Title Nobody Explains
The show caller is the person running live cues during the broadcast or show — telling teams exactly when to roll video, bring up lights, cut to a camera, or stand by for the next award announcement. It’s a real, standalone job on India’s award show and live broadcast circuit, and it’s closer to a TV or live-broadcast producer role than to event planning.
A show caller has to hold the entire run-of-show in their head while it’s happening in real time — no pausing, no redoing a cue. Event management training, which focuses on planning before the event and coordination during it, doesn’t prepare anyone for this. Technical production training — where you learn cue structures, console workflows, and how a live show is actually called — does.
Is Show Caller a Realistic Entry Point?
Not usually as a first job. Show callers are typically promoted from within technical teams — often lighting programmers or stage managers who’ve spent real hours on live shows first. That’s actually good news if you’re starting out: it means the console and rigging roles below aren’t just jobs in themselves, they’re also the training ground for becoming a show caller later.
Who Runs the Lighting at Award Shows? Meet the LD and the Programmer
Two separate, paid roles answer this question. The lighting designer (LD) builds the visual concept — the looks, the colour palette, the way light should move with the music and the moments on stage. The lighting programmer or operator sits at the console during the live show and executes that concept, cue by cue, often live-adjusting in real time when a performance runs long or a cue needs a last-second change.
On the console side, GrandMA3 is the global standard for large-scale shows, including the kind of production used on major Indian award shows. GrandMA3 operators are extremely rare in India relative to demand — which is exactly why this is one of the more accessible, well-paid entry points into technical production for someone with the right hands-on training.
This isn’t theoretical. Atharv Devikumar Jog trained in IIED’s One Year Program in Lighting Design and was placed as a Lighting Operator at SLS Production Equipment L.L.C in Saudi Arabia in August 2025 — SAR 10,000 a month, plus company accommodation, a return air ticket, and transportation. Silas Paul Uba, who came from an audio and media production background rather than event management, trained in lighting and was placed as a Lighting Designer and Technician (Grade B) at LumaSonic Structures Rental Pvt. Ltd. in Goa in September 2025, on ₹25,000 a month with full benefits including medical insurance.
Both of those are real, verified placements with offer letters — and both prove something specific: your existing skills, whether in audio, media, or something else entirely, can be the foundation for a lighting console career. You don’t need to start from zero.
What a Lighting Programmer Actually Needs to Know
Console operation on GrandMA3 or Avolite Titan, DMX and networking protocols, how to build and track cues, focus and gel work, and enough understanding of power and rigging to know what the fixture above your head is actually doing. This is precisely the curriculum inside IIED’s One Year Program in Lighting Design and its shorter GrandMA3 Mastery Program — built around live console hours, not lecture slides.
Rigging, Power, and the Crew Nobody Sees
Above every award show stage is a truss carrying lighting fixtures, speakers, and sometimes video panels — and someone rigged it, calculated its load, and certified it safe. Riggers are one of the least visible and most safety-critical roles on a technical production team. Rigging and trussing work in the live events industry follows structured safety standards, including the ANSI E1.1 entertainment rigging standard maintained by ESTA (the Entertainment Services and Technology Association) — the same body whose standards govern rigging practice on professional shows worldwide. That’s not a detail to skim past: get rigging wrong on a live show and the consequences are physical, not just financial.
Alongside the riggers sits the power and electrics technician, responsible for the show’s entire electrical load — generators, dimming circuits, earthing, and making sure a single power fault doesn’t take down the broadcast mid-show. Both roles demand real technical grounding: an understanding of loads, safety margins, and how to work under time pressure without cutting corners.
We’ve written a full, honest breakdown of this specific path in our guide to building a rigging and trussing career in India — worth reading if this is the part of the show floor that interests you most.
Why These Roles Get Overlooked by Job Seekers
Rigging and power roles don’t get the glamour of the console or the visibility of the show caller, so students chasing “event careers” tend to skip straight past them. That’s a mistake if you’re actually trying to get hired quickly — these are consistently understaffed positions on Indian production crews, and they’re taught almost nowhere outside dedicated technical training.
Why Your Event Management Course Didn’t Prepare You for This
Event management teaches you how to plan and coordinate an event: vendor management, timelines, client communication, budgets. Technical production designs and runs the physical show itself — light, sound, rigging, power, and live cues. Award shows need both. But the technical side is almost entirely absent from Indian event management syllabi, and it’s exactly where the harder-to-fill, better-paid jobs are.
If you’ve completed a BEM or a private event management diploma and you’re still applying with no callbacks, this is likely the actual gap. Production houses staffing an award show aren’t hiring more coordinators — they’re hiring console operators, riggers, CAD draftsmen, and show-floor technicians. Coordination is a commodity skill in this industry now. Technical production is not.
This isn’t a knock on event management as a discipline — it’s a genuinely different skill set, and plenty of event management graduates have gone on to build real design and production careers once they added the technical layer. Kshiti Jain graduated in event management, struggled to break into wedding design, and after adding design training started her own event design company. Lishika Jain did the same after her event management course and co-founded her own design business with two partners. The pattern is consistent: event management gets you in the door of the industry; design and technical training gets you hired for the roles that actually pay.
The Real Difference, in One Line
Event management plans the event. Technical production runs it. If you want to work an award show’s technical crew, you need training built for the second one — not more of the first.
How to Actually Break Into Technical Production Jobs in India
The good news is that none of the roles above require a four-year degree or years of unpaid runner work to get started. What they require is hands-on training on the actual tools these crews hire for — and a portfolio that proves you can use them.
Three courses at IIED map directly onto the roles covered in this post:
GrandMA3 Mastery Program (1 Month)
Built for people with a year or two of existing lighting exposure who want to move from basic operator to console-level designer. It covers system architecture, programming, cue building, tracking, and the advanced Phaser and Recipe workflows used on large professional rigs — the exact skill set behind the lighting programmer role on an award show floor. Fees: ₹75,000 + 18% GST, delivered offline with live console hours.
CAD for Events & Entertainment (1 Month)
Technical production runs on accurate documentation — stage layouts, rigging plots, production drawings. This course takes you from basic AutoCAD navigation through to full 3D site layouts and production-ready drawings, the paperwork every technical crew depends on before a single truss goes up. Fees: ₹20,000, inclusive of taxes.
One Year Program in Lighting Design
The full pathway — physics of light, power and electrics, rigging safety, DMX, live console training on both GrandMA3 and Avolite Titan, programming, and a built portfolio by the end. This is the course behind both the Atharv Jog and Silas Paul Uba placements referenced earlier, and it carries a 100% internship or job opportunity outcome. Fees: ₹3,00,000 + 18% GST across three instalments, taught by Lloyd Albuquerque, a working Light Director.
If you’re coming from an event management background specifically, the one-month courses (CAD or GrandMA3) are usually the faster, lower-cost way to add the missing technical layer without repeating a full degree. If you’re starting from scratch or want the complete pathway into lighting, the one-year program is built for exactly that.
What to Do Next
Don’t wait for a job posting that describes exactly what you already know how to do — build the skill the crews are actually short on, and the roles above become genuinely open to you. Book your free visit to IIED in Malad East, Mumbai, walk through the console room, and talk through which of these three courses actually fits where you are right now.
Book your free visit to IIED in Malad East, Mumbai — see the console room, talk through the GrandMA3 Mastery Program, CAD for Events & Entertainment, or the One Year Program in Lighting Design, and find out exactly which technical production role fits your background. Call or WhatsApp 9892966334.