Any Electrical Engineers Working in the Aerospace Industry? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: MauriceT
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: August 18, 2019, 08:19:48 pm
content: Hi,I am a currently an undergraduate student studying electrical and computer engineering, and have seen a lot of internship opportunities for electrical engineers in aerospace companies. I was wondering if anyone on the blog has experience as an electrical engineer in aerospace. If so, then what was a typical day on the job, what skills are needed, and what type of problems were you solving?Thank you!

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2019, 08:49:21 pm
content: Aerospace is a big field. There are many kinds of job and many kinds of working day in aerospace. The defence sector is bigger than the civilian sector, so expect most jobs to be in the mass murder sector.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 18, 2019, 09:01:16 pm
content: Yeah. Also, even though the field can be pretty interesting, expect a typical engineering job (especially when you just start) in the aerospace industry to actually be pretty boring. A lot of regulatory stuff, a lot of documentation to write, a lot of tests, a lot of processes to follow, and you'll probably work only on a very small part of any given project in a team of hundreds. Still interested?

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2019, 04:43:23 am
content: Very varied jobs. My career included circuit design, automated test software, field testing, simulation design and a variety of other things. Some of my peers socialized in IC design, management, embedded software and others. As with anything else it is largely what you make of it. If you come in and punch the clock each day you will end up following others orders and likely being unhappy. If you excel at some specialized thing enough to be indispensable you will have a place forever and may well enjoy it, but may also be trapped. Becoming good at a variety of jobs and making your bosses job easier by preventing and or solving problems can give you more freedom and satisfaction.

author: emece67
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2019, 04:01:18 pm
content: .

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2019, 04:13:00 pm
content: One of the things that eventually really wore me down in aerospace is that its rare to do something that reaches any serious volume production. You produce quite a lot of designs that go straight in the bin. You produce a lot of designs that get manufactured in handfuls. You might get to produce a design that gets manufactured in thousands. After all the work to design, polish and test a design, I eventually longed to see something I had developed made in millions. I had to leave aerospace before that was a realistic possibility.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 19, 2019, 08:41:54 pm
content: Quote from: coppice on August 19, 2019, 04:13:00 pmThis is emphatically true. The highest volume electronic production in aerospace that I can think of would be measured in hundreds of thousands, and even those rare programs tend to have annual production in the tens of thousands. If volume is your thing aerospace isn't it.