Advice / Recommendations for Career Transition into Engineering.

Question

Hi all! 
 I have a First Class MEng in Engineering Mathematics from University of Bristol and ~4 years of experience as a Data Engineer at several different clients. I now want to transition away from screen-based work into a more applied, technical role where my mathematical background is used in a real-world setting. 
 I am definitively not looking for work that primarily involves being sat at a desk in an office or from home (such as pure software/data positions). 
 Instead, I&rsquo;m particularly interested in roles that involve: - Physical on-site, field, or operational exposure (not fully remote) with opportunity to travel - Regular in-person collaboration and stakeholder interaction - Environments such as engineering, infrastructure, energy, defence, transport, or technical consulting - Applied problem-solving and quantitative analysis - Engineering or systems-level thinking 
 If you&rsquo;re aware of any opportunities aligned with the above, can put me in contact with anyone who can advise, or have any advice of your own, I would very much appreciate it and would very much be open to a conversation. 
 Thank you for your time.

Mark Tickner · Accepted Answer

I agree with Simon - I think you will struggle to meet all of those, so you may need to prioritise them. 
 You are more likely to find higher levels of on-site activities in the Civil Engineering industry. But even there, you will end up desk bound for periods as the assurance evidence still needs to be prepared. Most of the civil engineering companies I know take on apprentices and civil engineering graduates. 
 Possibly there may be some verification/validation test type roles, although a lot of testing (in an electronics at least) is generally automated. The issue here is that these sorts of companies are few and far between and these sorts of tasks have generally been outsourced to other countries. 
 Even if you joined a consultancy company, you might be on the clients site, but the client may have you preparing documentation (and probably will). A position in a consultancy company might be the closest fit for you here. 
 You will eventually end up desk bound like the rest of us, because ultimately as you progress you end up doing the project management, planning and processes (sorry). Although again, it depends what opportunities and direction you take. Some of our senior technical experts definitely escape from their desks and get to do travel, stakeholder interaction and collaboration.

Andy Millar · Answer

Hi James, 
 Unfortunately I'm pretty much going to have to endorse Simon and Mark's points I work in engineering consultancy, where we employ people with backgrounds like yours, and their roles (and mine) meet most of your bullets. Except that: we work in offices or at home. And although we work directly with clients all the time, since lockdown 99% of that is over Teams. This year I have had one face-to-face meeting with some of my colleagues and one of my clients (it was the same meeting!). 
 That said, there will be roles out there, but they will be hard to find. I would suggest that they will tend to be product / system development roles within businesses rather than in the consultancy world - going back many years when I ran a research and development team again I recruited people just like you, and was very pleased if they actually wanted to collaborate with their colleagues and talk to our clients (most didn't!). Unfortunately most roles are looking for people with experience in particular industries or applications, however a minority are more sensible than that. 
 Sadly it's probably a case of looking on LinkedIn etc and applying for everything you can. Make sure that your CV emphasises any creative problem solving experience you can, and any human interfacing experience you have - which may well come from outside your work. You haven't said where geographically you are looking, you may have more opportunities away from (for example) SE UK, as you get further away from London and other centres there are fewer people applying for positions so there's a better likelihood that employers will take a chance on you. 
 You can try going through recruiters, but they're not normally very good at placing people who aren't a nice simple sales fit, you are probably going to be better off applying to companies directly. 
 And despite my comments above, you may still want to try applying to consultancies, they may not give you quite the position you want yet, but it may help you build a CV which will get you to that position. And often consultancies are looking for people to be put on placement into clients organisations, which would give you more what you want. 
 But as Mark suggests, any role in engineering apart from technician roles and business development involves mostly staring at computers. And even those roles typically involve a lot of staring at computers. 
 Good luck, 
 Andy

Advice / Recommendations for Career Transition into Engineering.

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