Engineering Careers

Hi everyone,

Since my last post, I have been looking in to engineering as a career - more specifically, Mechanical Engineering.

I'm a little confused with what an engineer actually does.

I understand that they design and test different systems, solutions, etc., which is fine and dandy. Is it a practical career though, that involves digging in, getting dirty and using your hands?

Are there any other fields that involve being practical and is hands on?

Thanks

Jimbo

Reply 1

Scuttle

In your early years as an engineer, you may well get your hands dirty testing things, however the money stops going up after a few years and most engineers end up managing engineering projects or just moving out of the sector and into standard management. I believe the statistic is that 80% of companies have engineers on their board of directors, so you see many/most leave the industry after a while.

As for the degree itself, you will have to do practical work, but also a lot of book learning (hence engineering having the most contact hours of just about any course).

The sort of role you might have differs depending on where you choose to work, but it could be something like receiving the specification for an engine cylinder head and being asked to come up with some designs and run simulations to see which is most effective.
Or, you could be testing lubricants and doing a variety of destructive tests to see how they perform.
Or you could be a race engineer for an F1 team.

Seriously the brilliant thing about engineering is there are tons of options in the field itself, and you can easily move off into finance/management or whatever.
If you want hands on, it's yours, if you don't then that is doable too.

Anything you wan't me to be more specific about?

EDIT: I should make it clear that a Mechanical Engineer and a Mechanic are NOTHING alike. An engineer designs and tests, and a mechanic merely fixes things when they go wrong. You can get your hands dirty as an engineer in some ways but generally you shouldn't think of it as an oily boiler suit sort of thing. Unless you are in F1.

Reply 2

robert1987

There is also quite a lot of applied maths in engineering at degree level, as it is used to model processes and solve problems, so you do need a fair amount of mathematical ability/enthusiasm.