What are the core jobs for electrical and electronics engineering students?

Answer 1

In engineering there are 2 main roles one can play:

• Design & projects (of new systems/ factories/ circuits etc.) - will get to make many engineering decisions on a daily basis (i.e. considering alternative solutions to a problem, assessing each one technically and economically, and then making a decision) important to get involved when the designs are actually implemented and tested to learn from mistakes - but won't get to see the long term and practical issues that present themselves to the people who use the designs
• Maintenance (of existing systems) - many practical lessons about production and business in general can be learnt while spending time in this kind of role. Some interesting problems also come up which need to be practically solved by the engineer. Most likely you will have technicians working with/ reporting to you who will fix problems on a lower level whereas the engineer will try to fix problems from a higher level (solving the root causes of problems)

(in my opinion it is ideal to have experience in both fields. Particularly for design engineers as knowing the practical issues will greatly improve your designs)

In each of the fields listed below for electrical/ electronic engineering one can play one of or a combination of the above roles:

Electrical engineering fields:

• Electrical Machines (design and maintenance) - the workhorses of industry
• • Pumps - A lot of interface with mechanical engineers
  • Conveyors
  • Other machinery e.g. mixers etc.
• Power distribution (design and maintenance)
• • Transformers
  • Cables
  • Power generation - which can include renewable e.g. solar and wind power; otherwise hydro-power; nuclear power; coal-power etc.
  • Substations
• Power electronics (design)
• • Heavy duty, high power electronic circuitry - quite involved with Power distribution and Electrical machines

Electronic engineering fields

• Telecommunications and signals (design)
• • Circuitry for :Transmitting and receiving signals; Noise reduction
  • Programming of circuitry and microprocessors
• Control/ Automation/ Instrumentation engineering (design and maintenance)
• • Automation of factory systems/ production lines
  • Automatic safety systems e.g. fire alarms and fire water system etc.
  • Optmisation of production - maximise profits, minimise waste - using computer systems and programs essentially
• Electronics/ circuitry (design)
• • Special applications as they present themselves

So the industries that would require the above technologies, would require electrical/ electronic engineers - either consultants or in-house depending on the size of the company etc. and many of the above fields overlap quite a lot (you need to use signalling in e.g. a control system as well as electronics, you will need a power supply for the control system and the control system will most likely be controlling machinery e.g. a factory's conveyor belt system driven by motors)

These are some of the types of jobs one could get involved in as an Electronic/ Electrical engineer but many with Electrical/ Electronic engineering degrees stray into other fields as unrelated as e.g. banking - engineering gives you many options