What can I do with an engineering degree?

If you are graduating with a degree in engineering, it's likely that you will be looking at going into a particular career that uses your specialist knowledge, although this depends very much on your specific discipline.

Careers for engineering graduates

Some of the areas of work employing engineering graduates are:

• aerospace
• biomaterials development
• biomedical and medical technologies
• chemical and pharmaceutical
• civil engineering (consulting or contracting)
• electrical engineering and power generation
• energy and utilities
• engineering design
• environmental consultancy
• ICT and telecommunications
• industrial research
• maintenance engineering
• manufacturing and production
• medical devices
• process development
• process engineering, control and maintenance
• quality assurance and quality control
• research and development
• systems analysis and software engineering.

Use our ‘jobs with your degree’ tool to access an additional list of job descriptions with detailed information about each career.

Employability skills gained from an engineering degree

our degree subject does not necessarily limit your options. It’s been estimated that 40 per cent of graduate vacancies do not ask for specific degree subjects. And if you do not want to pursue a career in engineering, your degree will have helped you develop a range of transferable skills that you can bring to jobs unrelated to your subject. These include:

• analytical thinking
• capacity for detail
• creativity
• data analysis
• laboratory skills
• logical thinking
• numeracy, statistics and computing
• presentation and other communication skills
• problem solving
• organisational abilities
• project management
• research skills
• teamwork.

Alternative careers for engineering graduates

An engineering background could be useful in a number of other careers, for example:

• business and management
• finance
• fire prevention and safety
• IT
• law
• management consulting
• patents
• research
• supply-chain management
• teaching and lecturing
• technical sales
• technical writing.