Whether you have earned JCU’s bachelors of engineering or are just starting on the path, you’ll want to know the careers available to you. After lots of hard work, it’s nice to know there’s a rewarding job at the end of it. Here are five of the top careers you can have with an engineering degree!
Patent Law
Straight off the bat, here’s a field you probably didn’t expect. When working on your engineering degree for so long, it’s nice to have a break from the intensity of it all and this is why some people go into patent law. By working with intellectual property (IP), you’re still in the engineering field but putting your expertise to a slightly different use.
Rather than coming from a legal background, many patent lawyers are actually engineers because it’s the technical expertise that helps them to deal with innovations and intricate designs. Of course, this one will require more training, but it’s all the more rewarding on the other side.
Teaching or Lecturing
For some people, they have a desire to pass their engineering passion on to the next generation. If so, you may have a career in teaching or lecturing. Which will you choose? On the one hand, you can teach school children and pique their interest at an early age. Alternatively, lecturing allows you to go deeper for young adults who have chosen engineering as a potential career path.
As fellow teachers will tell you, this is a rewarding job because you’re building problem-solving skills in students. As a key member of the teaching team, you might just influence a handful of future engineering experts for the field.
Consulting
In truth, an engineering degree opens you up to multiple consultancy careers. The obvious example would be consulting on engineering-related projects. By lending your expertise to projects, the benefit of this is that you can work on something different every week; your work is always changing.
Elsewhere, you might become a problem-solver for businesses of all shapes and sizes. You come in as a consultant, assess the main problems of the business, and create solutions for them to become more efficient. Over time, you’ll use statistical modelling and data analysis to help a business to grow in the market.
Engineer
It’s time to address the obvious because an engineering degree will allow you to enter the engineering world. However, you’ll need to choose your specialisation (if you haven’t already). Here are some possible fields:
- Materials engineering
- Chemical engineering
- Mechanical engineering
- Electrical engineering
- Technical sales engineering
- Petroleum engineering
Depending on your specialisation, this could open the door to work in logistics, supply chain, operation management, and purchasing/procurement.
Sports Development
Finally, those with a passion for sports could use their engineering degree as a way into the industry. Sports engineering encompasses fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, manufacturing, and much more. These days, organisations are willing to listen to scientists/engineers when it comes to coaching, sports equipment, and even stadiums/arenas.
While on the topic of sport, you could go into mechanical engineering and work in the world of motorsport. For instance, Formula 1 might take your fancy. Travel the world while working with other elite engineers on the fastest track cars on the planet.
When you have an engineering degree, the career you choose is completely up to you. Don’t think you’re restricted to engineering itself because the skills apply to careers like patent law and sports development. Hopefully, your mind is now more open, and you can discover other amazing careers!
