Snapshot
Career Cluster(s): Arts, A/V Technology & Communications; Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics
Interests: Electronics; Electrical Systems; Technology; Design; Creativity; Music
Earnings (Yearly Average): $103,390
Employment & Outlook: As Fast As Average Growth Expected
Overview
Sphere of Work
Electrical engineers design, develop, test, and supervise the manufacture of electrical equipment, such as electric motors, radar and navigation systems, communications systems, or power generation equipment. Electrical engineers also design the electrical systems of automobiles and aircraft.
Electronics engineers design and develop electronic equipment, including broadcast and communications systems, such as portable music players and Global Positioning System (GPS) devices. Many also work in areas closely related to computer hardware.
Both may play a role in the design and production of musical equipment, such as synthesizers, amplifiers, and recording studio equipment.
Profile
Working Conditions: Both Inside and Outside
Physical Strength: Medium Work
Education Needs: Bachelor’s Degree
Licensure/Certification: Usually Not Required
Opportunities for Experience: Internship; Co-op
Interest Score: IR
Work Environment
Electrical and electronics engineers typically work in offices of various sizes, although travel may be necessary to visit sites where their equipment is being installed and operated.
Occupation Interest
Electrical and electronics engineers are creative, math- and science-oriented individuals who want to apply their knowledge to the creation of new electrical and electronic systems, components, and equipment. Applications in this field are wide-ranging, so engineers are often able to apply their skillset to fields they are passionate about, such as music production.
Duties and Responsibilities
Electrical Engineer
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Designing new ways to use electrical power to develop or improve products
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Performing detailed calculations to develop manufacturing, construction, and installation standards and specifications
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Directing the manufacture, installation, and testing of electrical equipment to ensure that products meet specifications and codes
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Investigating complaints from customers or the public, evaluating problems, and recommending solutions
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Working with project managers on production efforts to ensure that projects are completed satisfactorily, on time, and within budget
Electronics Engineer
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Designing electronic components, software, products, or systems for commercial, industrial, medical, military, or scientific applications
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Analyzing customer needs and determining the requirements, capacity, and cost for developing an electrical system plan
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Developing maintenance and testing procedures for electronic components and equipment
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Evaluating systems and recommending design modifications or equipment repair
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Inspecting electronic equipment, instruments, and systems to make sure they meet safety standards and applicable regulations
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Planning and developing applications and modifications for electronic properties used in parts and systems to improve technical performance
A Day in the Life—Duties and Responsibilities
The work of electrical engineers and electronics engineers is often similar. Both use engineering and design software and equipment to do engineering tasks. Both types of engineers also must work with other engineers to discuss existing products and possibilities for engineering projects.
Electronics engineers who work for the federal government research, develop, and evaluate electronic devices used in a variety of areas, such as aviation, computing, transportation, and manufacturing. They work on federal electronic devices and systems, including satellites, flight systems, radar and sonar systems, and communications systems.
Electrical and electronics engineers working in music may design systems for use in recording studios or concert venues, as well as individual instruments and components.
Work Environment
Immediate Physical Environment
Electrical and electronics engineers generally work indoors in offices. However, they may visit sites to observe a problem or a piece of complex equipment. This could include visiting recording studios or concert venues where their equipment is being used. Most electrical and electronics engineers work full-time.
Human Environment
Electrical and electronics engineers may conduct solitary office and laboratory work, but team efforts are common, and engineers must be prepared to work with manufacturers, visit sites, interact with customers and the public, and troubleshoot issues, sometimes under stressful conditions if their equipment is being used in time-sensitive circumstances.
Technological Environment
By their nature, electrical and electronics engineers must be intimately familiar with the equipment necessary to carry out their work and must stay apprised of new developments in their field. Computer-aided design (CAD) software is commonly used, as is analytical or scientific software, development environment software, and object- or component-oriented development software.
Education, Training, and Advancement
High School/Secondary
High school students interested in studying electrical or electronics engineering benefit from taking courses in physics and math, including algebra, trigonometry, and calculus. Courses in drafting are also helpful, because electrical and electronics engineers often are required to prepare technical drawings. During high school, students can attend engineering summer camps to see what these and other engineers do. Attending these camps can help students plan their coursework for the remainder of their time in high school. The Engineering Education Service Center (EESC) has a directory of engineering summer camps.
Suggested High School Subjects
Related Career Pathways/Majors
Arts, A/V Technology & Communications Career Cluster
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A/V Technology & Film Career Pathway
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Performing Arts Career Pathway
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Telecommunications Career Pathway
Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics Career Cluster
Transferable Skills and Abilities
Concentration
Initiative
Interpersonal Skills
Math Skills
Speaking Skills
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Working closely with other engineers and technicians
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Explaining designs and reasoning clearly and relaying instructions during product development and production
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Explaining complex issues to customers who have little or no technical expertise
Writing Skills
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Developing technical publications related to equipment they develop, including maintenance manuals, operation manuals, parts lists, product proposals, and design methods documents
Postsecondary
To enter the occupation, prospective electrical and electronics engineers need a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, electronics engineering, electrical engineering technology, or a related engineering field. Programs include classroom, laboratory, and field studies. Courses include digital systems design, differential equations, and electrical circuit theory. Programs in electrical engineering, electronics engineering, or electrical engineering technology should be accredited by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc. (ABET).
Some colleges and universities offer cooperative programs in which students gain practical experience while completing their education. Cooperative programs combine classroom study with practical work. Internships provide similar experience and are growing in number.
At some universities, students can enroll in a 5-year program that leads to both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree. A graduate degree allows an engineer to work as an instructor at some universities, or in research and development.
Related College Majors
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Engineering Mechanics
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Engineering Physics
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Engineering Physics/Applied Physics
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Engineering Science
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Environmental/Environmental Health Engineering
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Laser & Optical Engineering
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Materials Engineering
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Mechanical Engineering
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Telecommunications Engineering
Professional Certification and Licensure
Licensure is not required for entry-level positions as electrical and electronics engineers. A Professional Engineering (PE) license, which allows for higher levels of leadership and independence, can be acquired later in one’s career. Licensed engineers are called professional engineers (PEs). A PE can oversee the work of other engineers, sign off on projects, and provide services directly to the public. State licensure generally requires:
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a degree from an ABET-accredited engineering program
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a passing score on the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam
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relevant work experience, typically at least 4 years
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a passing score on the Professional Engineering (PE) exam
The initial Fundamentals of Engineering Examination (FE) can be taken after earning a bachelor’s degree. Engineers who pass this exam commonly are called engineers in training (EITs) or engineer interns (EIs). After meeting work experience requirements, EITs and EIs can take the second exam, called the Principles and Practice of Engineering (PE).
Each state issues its own licenses. Most states recognize licensure from other states if the licensing state’s requirements meet or exceed their own licensure requirements. Several states require continuing education for engineers to keep their licenses.
Earnings and Advancement
Earnings depend on industry, experience, and project scope and scale. Median annual earnings of electrical engineers were $100,830 in 2020. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $64,870, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $159,520. Median annual earnings of electronics engineers were $107,540 in 2020. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $69,210, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $167,410.
Electrical and electronics engineers may receive paid vacations, holidays, and sick days; life and health insurance; and retirement benefits. These are usually paid by the employer. Engineers who are required to travel may be able to recoup these expenses by their employer.
Electrical and electronic engineers may advance to supervisory positions in which they lead a team of engineers and technicians. Some may move to management positions, working as engineering or program managers. Preparation for managerial positions usually requires working under the guidance of a more experienced engineer.
For sales work, an engineering background enables engineers to discuss a product’s technical aspects and assist in product planning and use.
Employment and Outlook
Electrical and electronic engineers held 328,100 jobs in 2019. Employment is expected to grow as fast as average for all occupations through the year 2029, at a rate of 3 percent. Employment growth is expected to be tempered by slow growth or decline in some industries, such as manufacturing and utilities.
Famous First
English scientist Michael Faraday (1791-1867) is often considered to be the father of electrical engineering, due to his experiments with electromagnetic rotation and electromagnetic induction— principles behind devices such as the electric motor and electric transformer. Source: newengineer.com
Job growth for electrical and electronics engineers is projected to occur largely in professional, scientific, and technical services firms, as more companies are expected to tap the expertise of engineers for projects involving electronic devices and systems. These engineers also will be needed to develop sophisticated consumer electronics.
The rapid pace of technological innovation will create some demand for electrical and electronics engineers in research and development, an area in which engineering expertise will be needed to design distribution systems related to new technologies. These engineers will play key roles in new developments with solar arrays, semiconductors, and communications technologies.
Related Occupations
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Aerospace Engineer
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Architectural/Engineering Manager
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Bioengineer/Biomedical Engineer
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Computer Hardware Engineer
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Electrical/Electronics Engineering Technician
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Electrical/Electronics Installer/Repairer
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Electrician
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Electro-mechanical Technician
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Network/Computer Systems Administrator
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Sales Engineer
More Information
Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc. (ABET)
415 North Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21201
410.347.7700
www.abet.org
American Association of Engineering Societies (AAES)
1801 Alexander Bell Drive
Reston, VA 20191
202.296.2237
www.aaes.org
American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE)
1818 N Street NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC 20036
202.331.3500
www.asee.org
Association for Technology in Music Education (ATME)
barry.atticks@millersville.edu
www.atmimusic.com
Audio Engineering Society (AES)
132 East 43rd Street, Suite 405
New York, NY 10017
212.661.8528
www.aes.org
Engineering Education Service Center (EESC)
1411 Old Hardman Btms Road
Clarkesville, GA 30523
706.499.5011
www.engineeringedu.com
International Society of Automation (ISA)
67 T.W. Alexander Drive
Research Triangle Park, NC 27709
919.549.8411
www.isa.org
National Association of Power Engineers (NAPE)
1 Springfield Street, Suite 1
Chicopee, MA 01013
413.592.9273
www.powerengineers.com
National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES)
200 Verdae Boulevard
Greenville, SC 29607
800.250.3196
www.ncees.org
National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE)
1420 King Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
888.285.6773
www.nspe.org
Production Music Association (PMA)
P.O. Box 341468
Los Angeles, CA 90034
310.913.2289
info@pmamusic.com
www.pmamusic.com
Technology Student Association (TSA)
1904 Association Drive
Reston, VA 20191-1540
703.860.9000
general@tsaweb.org
www.tsaweb.org
Conversation With... DANIEL W. BLISS
Associate Professor, Arizona State University
School of Electrical, Computer & Energy Engineering
Systems Engineer, 30 years
What was your individual career path in terms of education/training, entry-level job, or other significant opportunity?
I enjoyed mathematics and physics and because my dad was a mechanical engineer, I was exposed to the idea of engineering. Because I was more math inclined, electrical engineering seemed the right path. I earned a B.S. in electrical engineering from Arizona State University.
As I looked around for what to do, rocket avionics seemed an interesting path and I took a job with General Dynamics in San Diego working on the Atlas-Centaur launch vehicle. Developing and designing rocket avionics is a lot of fun, but it is 90 percent testing. So, when my boss suggested a new opportunity to develop super conducting magnets for a high-energy particle accelerator, I took it. Basically, you take a particle—in my case, a proton—pass it in through an RF cavity that accelerates the particle and bend the path of the particle back to the cavity with strong magnets to accelerate it further. The particle accelerator we worked on was to understand the basic building blocks of the universe.
Concurrent with my job at General Dynamics, I began work toward an M.S. and a PhD in physics at the University of California, San Diego while doing much of my research at Cornell University. My research focused on high-energy particle physics.
As I finished my doctorate, unfortunately the U.S. particle accelerator project, the superconducting super collider (SSC)—similar to the one in Cern, Switzerland—shut down and the jobs dried up. I didn’t want to go for a post-doctoral position because I saw really good people doing that for years and still not get a faculty position. My electromagnetics teaching assistant from grad school, who worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, gave me a reference that helped me get a job at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. It’s a federally-funded national lab for technology development. I was there 15 years, first as technical staff and then as senior staff leading tens of millions of dollar programs and developing advanced communications and radar systems, and novel physiological signal processing.
I had always thought about being a professor and explored different possibilities. Just over five years ago, I found the position here at ASU. Ten PhD students and four research scientists work under me at the university’s Bliss Laboratory for Information, Signals and Systems. We work on radar systems and communications systems for everything from your phone to the internet of things to control systems for various things that fly. Radar systems may be large- scale military systems or weather radars or extremely small-scale radars that measure cardiac signals. I also direct the Center for Wireless Information Systems and Computational Architectures. In addition to my research, I spend about a third of my time getting money to fund that research. I earned awards of more than $1.5 million in 2015-2016. I also teach a class every semester.
What are the most important skills and/or qualities for someone in your profession?
I view myself as a systems engineer who goes across the spectrum from fundamental theory to how does a piece of technology I built fit into the larger system? To do that, some skills are not surprising, such as a thorough understanding of mathematics, physics, statistics, and familiarity with the current state of technology.
However, you also need to be able to see the big picture. How does a technology fit into the user’s needs and into the needs of society as a whole? You have to talk to users and sponsors to learn this. You need to be able to communicate your ideas, and, more importantly, listen and re-tune your ideas and goals based upon what they tell you. You need to work with a team, and manage the challenge of fitting projects to the skill sets of your team members.
Finally, there might be fallacy in the nature of the question. I think that the traditional idea of a profession will soon die. Because of technology, we are creating new and destroying old careers at a rate that we have never seen before. While the name of a profession may stay the same, the primary duties are becoming fluid. As a system engineer, I may be at the edge of this phenomenon, but to a greater or lesser extent, it will touch all professions soon. We all need to be looking for the next shift and to be constantly learning.
What do you wish you had known going into this profession?
Honestly, I don’t think I have ever been really surprised by any aspects of my duties. However, I have been surprised when I observed occasional, although all too common, examples of sexism and racism. I have to admit that early in my career, I simply did not know how to respond. It is easy for me to tell people that it is unacceptable now, but I was not equipped for it then.
Are there many job opportunities in your profession? In what specific areas?
The opportunities for those who understand mathematics, physics, and computers are particularly rich. I believe many opportunities will arise from the implications of small-scale radars for a wide range of applications, such as individualized medical systems or human-machine gesture interfaces. Much like people thought that it would be ridiculous to put a camera on a phone, I think that many are underestimating the future opportunities of these tiny radars.
How do you see your profession changing in the next five years, how will technology impact that change, and what skills will be required?
Because we are the developers of technology, we need to spend more time thinking about user and societal implications. The fact is, all of our technologies will increasingly become integrated into every single aspect of life. As examples, we currently have a fundamental problem with our approach to the internet of things, or IoT, which is basically the practice of connecting devices to the internet and/or to each other. The way it is evolving, we are just putting more gadgets on the internet, but no one is really taking care of them. Maybe bad actors are taking over someone’s Blu-ray player and using it as a bot. We are at the precipice of a wide range of privacy and security disasters associated with flawed system choices.
What do you enjoy most about your job? What do you enjoy least about your job?
I love coming up with system ideas that I get to explore mathematically and practically, and I enjoy writing about these ideas. On the less enjoyable side, I spend an inordinate amount of time working on contracting issues.
Can you suggest a valuable “try this” for students considering a career in your profession?
A friend told me that he likes to hire people who “live the lifestyle.” He meant that he likes to hire people would do engineering projects at home for fun. For example, get GNU Radio running on your computer. Get a software-defined radio and see if you and a friend can communicate with a waveform of your own design. And, keep playing with math.
This interview was originally published in 2018.
Conversation With... MIKE RUST
Electrical Engineer
Senior engineer/Co-owner, D2D Technologies
Jacksonville, FL
In the field, 35 years
What was your individual career path in terms of education/training, entry-level job, or other significant opportunity?
I knew I wanted a career in some type of science starting in high school. I like seeing things work, and I knew engineering had good-paying jobs, usually in high demand. I took a lot of math, physics, biology, and chemistry courses with this in mind. After high school, I started at the University of Maryland with a declared major of biology, but soon realized I really wanted to be an electrical engineer because it was a more financially lucrative field and there were more opportunities. I’ve always been practical like that. I earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and did all the coursework for my Master of Science in electrical engineering during the following two years. My first job was in avionics, designing circuit boards to allow systems on planes to communicate with each other. Over time, I moonlighted side jobs because I was always interested in having my own consulting business. When the company I worked for wanted to transfer me, I asked for a layoff because, at the time, they offered a good severance package. I took it and started my own business. I like consulting; I have more control over my time, am not tied to a commute, and can live where I want to. My specialty is PC (printed circuit) board design, which are the boards inside all of the electronics in your home and business. I also design field programmable gate arrays, which are used in broadcast facilities such as cable TV or satellite, as well as many other places.
What are the most important skills and/or qualities for someone in your profession?
When you’re in school, math skills are needed and physics helps. Once you move into your professional life, the desire to make things work and work correctly all the time are key. You also need learn how to communicate technical subject matter to people who don’t quite understand how something works.
What do you wish you had known going into this profession?
I wish I had known that it is difficult to remain a working engineer versus being pushed into management, but that is probably true with most professions. In engineering, about ten years into a career, people get moved into management. It’s hard to find working engineers over 40 or 45; by then they’ve either washed out or moved into management. The technical stuff is the fun stuff even though it’s harder; in management, you’re dealing with people and deadlines.
Are there many job opportunities in your profession? In what specific areas?
Yes, there are many opportunities in my field as it is a key part of so many things in today’s world—smartphones, computers, robotics, the Internet, social media, space exploration, biomedical, telecommunications, solar energy, the automotive industry...
How do you see your profession changing in the next five years, what role will technology play in those changes, and what skills will be required?
Since electrical engineering is at the forefront of a lot of technological change, you must always stay on top of many of the latest computer technologies. Most of the tools we use to design products are computer-based software programs. Significant portions of the electrical engineering field are very close to computer science; sometimes we have to write the software to put our tools together.
Also, computer languages are always evolving and you need to stay abreast of that as well. I don’t think the field will change drastically over the next few years, but it is constantly evolving and people in the field must be very adaptable.
What do you enjoy most about your job? What do you enjoy least about your job?
I really enjoy seeing something I created work as I envisioned it during the design process. I don’t enjoy all the documentation—sometimes pages and pages—that must be done to ensure that someone else can reproduce the design, but it is necessary so other people can carry on my work since I’m a consultant.
Can you suggest a valuable “try this” for students considering a career in your profession?
Getting involved in programming languages and Arduino board projects and making something that works while you’re still in high school (or before) are inexpensive ways to determine if you like doing that type of thing. For instance, you could start building a robot with an Arduino board and a couple of stepper motors. You could also write an app for a smartphone. Most people don’t realize how close electrical engineering is to computer science these days, but an electrical engineer has many more career choices than a computer scientist.
This interview was originally published in 2015.