Engineer
You get handed something that has to work, and you decide how. Then you find out whether you were right, because the thing either survives the test or it does not, and almost no other job answers you that plainly.
Related: Software Engineer, Founder, Management Consultant
The day in the life
Marlow · the stools coming back
One page, and the moulds get cut in three weeks
- •about forty thousand stools out there, four years of them
- •about one in forty comes back cracked at the hinge
- •nothing written down about what one is meant to survive
the blank page, before you start
In four years nobody at Marlow has written down what one of their step stools is supposed to cope with: how heavy, how often, how rough. So nobody can say whether the cracked ones are failing or just wearing out. You write it down now. What do you make it about?
Try a day as an engineer
A short, playful taste of the real work.
Growing much faster than most jobs, with about 18,100 openings a year. The catch is on the way in: about a fifth of people with this degree are in a job that does not need it.
A four-year degree, and employers want one from a course that has been officially checked. You need no license to start, and you need one later before anyone lets you put your name on a design as the person answering for it.
What you’d do all day
Most of this page is about mechanical engineering, which is the biggest kind and the one most people mean. The picture is somebody building things. The reality is that the two parts of the day engineers themselves rate highest are writing down exactly what a part has to be and working at a computer, and somebody else usually makes it, on the strength of a drawing you got exact enough to hand over.
What stays yours is the judgment: working out what a thing has to survive when nobody has written it down, how much room to leave over that, what is worth testing in the time you have, and what to change when it breaks somewhere nobody was looking. Close is worth nothing here. Almost everybody in the job says being exact is very or extremely important.
- Drawing up the parts35%
- Running the numbers20%
- Testing things20%
- Meetings and reviews15%
- Email and paperwork10%
Over half the day is getting one part exact enough for a stranger to make it, and checking your own numbers. Roughly, and it swings a lot with what the team is on that month.
The job title is the same everywhere, and the actual work splits into a few tracks.
- Designyou decide what the part should be, and get the drawing exact enough for somebody else to make it.
- Testyou break things on purpose, so it happens in your room instead of in somebody’s house.
- Manufacturingyou get the factory actually making it: which machines, in what order, and what goes wrong when they do.
- Projectyou run the whole thing end to end, so most of your day is other people and dates.
A typical early-career day
- 8:30Email, before anything else
Everyone in this job is on email every day. Overnight there are questions from the factory, a supplier and somebody else’s team.
- 9:30Drawing up a part
You get one part exact enough that somebody who has never met you can make it. That is the highest-rated thing in the whole job.
- 11:30Somebody needs your call
The factory wants to change how they make something. They need to know whether the part still does what it is supposed to, and that is your answer to give.
- 2:00Down to the test
You load the thing until it gives. Your last change moved where it breaks rather than whether it breaks, which is the normal result.
- 4:00The review
You take it to the people who have to sign it off, and most of their questions are about what happens when somebody uses it wrong.
A rough day for somebody a few years into a design job at a company that makes things. Plenty of engineering jobs look nothing like it: on a building site, in a lab, or in a factory where the machines are the product.
The outlook
Where it’s going
The work is growing faster than most jobs, about 9% through 2034, with roughly 18,100 openings a year. The government says the growth comes from automation itself: as factories put in more complicated machines, somebody has to design them and fit them into what is already there.
Right now
Mechanical engineering is one of only three subjects most employers say they plan to hire from this year, and starting pay across engineering went up about 3% for people finishing in 2026. The honest other half is the one in five mechanical engineering graduates working in a job that does not need the degree, and a front door that is narrower than the pay makes it sound: employers want a course from an accredited school, and that is also what a license later depends on.
Would you like it?
Worth a look if you would happily break your own work on purpose to find out where it gives.
Tap any that sound like you.
In practice, people realize it’s their thing when…
…and it probably isn’t their thing when
How people get in
- 4
- Years it takes on average
- $48K
- Average cost
- 69 in 100
- Pass the first exam first time
Every way in
A mechanical engineering degree
About 5 in 10
Four years · About $48K for the degree
A two year course in building and testing
About 3 in 10
Two years · Two years of fees
That is a different job with a different name, making and testing what somebody else drew, and it earns about $64,800 four years out.
There is no teach yourself route here. The licence rules list four ways to qualify and every one of them is a degree from a checked course.
How your first job gets decided
Nobody turns you away at the start. The wall comes later, at the licence: a body called ABET checks engineering courses, and only a degree from a course it has checked counts. It has checked more than 3,400 of them at nearly 700 colleges.
What employers check
- That your course was one of the checked ones. Big companies ask for it, and the licence will not take anything else.
- A summer spent somewhere real. Employers say that is what decides between two people who otherwise look the same, and doing it at the same company you are applying to counts for most of all.
- This subject is wanted. At least 60 in every 100 companies said they were hiring mechanical engineering graduates this year.
Nothing here is assigned to you. What sets two graduates apart is the summers, because employers say that is the tiebreaker, and courses here are often built to make room for them.
- A mechanical engineering degree earns about $92,100 four years after you finish. A master’s in it earns about $116,000.
- The Air Force takes engineers out of college as officers, and names mechanical engineering on its own list of degrees for the job.
- The first exam gets harder the longer you leave it. 71 in 100 pass it before they graduate, and 63 in 100 once a year has gone by.
When to apply
One exam decides most of this, and the best week to sit it is the one before you leave college.
- Your last yearSit the first exam. It costs $225, it runs every week of the year, and you can book it any time. Take it now and 71 in 100 pass; leave it a year and 63 in 100 do.
- April to JuneThe busiest months for that exam, because most people take it as they walk out.
- Four years of work laterThe second exam, $400, and you pick one of three: heating and cooling, machine design, or heat and moving fluids. Pass it and you can put your own name on a design.
How long it takes
College
Four years
The first exam
Sit it before you leave
Working
Four years
The second exam
Now you can approve work yourself
Four years to the job, and eight before anything you design goes out under your own name.
Eight years, and nothing on this page lets you skip any of it. Working out what a thing has to survive when nobody wrote it down takes an afternoon, and that judgment is the whole job.
Try working out why something keeps breakingFix the Thing That Keeps Breaking, and Prove It Stays Fixed
Find something near you that keeps giving way, a drawer, a hook, a bag strap, a gate. Turn the complaint into a line with real numbers in it, build a rough fix out of what is already in your house, then break your own fix on purpose to find out where it goes. Change one thing, run the same test again, and hand it to the person who has been living with it, with an honest line about what it still will not survive.
Where these numbers come from
Written by the Sidequest team, from the sources below.
- Pay: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Mechanical Engineers (SOC 17-2141), May 2024 wages, page last updated August 2025. Starting and mid-career pay by major: Federal Reserve Bank of New York, The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates, released February 2026 on 2024 data. Where engineering graduates actually end up: National Academy of Engineering, Understanding the Educational and Career Pathways of Engineers, 2018. Dated August 2026.
- The outlook: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook (SOC 17-2141, outlook 2024-34); O*NET 17-2141.00 (updated 2026); Federal Reserve Bank of New York, The Labor Market for Recent College Graduates (February 2026, on 2024 data); National Association of Colleges and Employers, Winter 2026 Salary Survey. Dated August 2026.
- Getting in: How many people take each route is our own estimate, rounded. O*NET OnLine 17-2141.00 Mechanical Engineers, site updated August 25 2026, read September 2026, for Job Zone Four and the education answers of 52, 29 and 9 in every 100. National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying, Model Law section 130.10, read September 2026 from the published file, for the licence accepting only degrees from ABET accredited programs and for the four years of experience a bachelor holder needs before the second exam. NCEES, its own FE and PE Mechanical exam pages, read September 2026, for the year round testing, the $225 and $400 fees and the three named mechanical exams. NCEES, the 2025 issue of Squared, its annual licensure statistics report covering October 2024 to September 2025, read September 2026 from the report itself, for the first time mechanical FE pass rate of 69 in 100, the 71.34, 70.62 and 63.43 percent pass rates by how long after graduation the exam is taken, and the April to June being the busiest window. ABET, Why ABET Accreditation Matters, read September 2026, for the more than 3,400 programs at nearly 700 colleges. U.S. Department of Education College Scorecard, field of study data, CIP 14.19 Mechanical Engineering, 408 bachelor programs and 247 master programs, and CIP 15.08 Mechanical Engineering Related Technologies at associate level, 233 programs, all queried September 2026, for the $92,135, $115,974 and $64,773 medians four years out. National Association of Colleges and Employers, Winter 2026 Salary Survey published January 26 2026 and its Job Outlook 2026, read September 2026, for at least 60 percent of employers planning to hire mechanical engineering graduates and for internships deciding between otherwise equal candidates. U.S. Air Force, Developmental Engineer 62E career page, read September 2026, for mechanical being named in its own degree list. College Board, Trends in College Pricing and Student Aid 2025, public four year in state tuition and fees of $11,950 a year, for the four year total. Dated September 2026.