Is an engineering job the right career path for you?
ENGINEER yourself a secure future.
Whether you’re an IT engineer or a traditional engineer, all engineering roles involve inventing, designing, building and maintaining something, either machines and structures or IT and data systems.
As the people who design the systems society relies on, engineers are sought-after and can command high salaries – but the UK isn’t training enough new workers.
Just under half of traditional engineering firms say they are struggling to recruit staff and one in five engineers currently working in the UK are due to retire by 2026, making the shortages more pressing.
In the digital sector, a quarter of firms cannot find enough IT and software engineers.
So if you’re looking for an exciting new career path which offers job security and good pay, here’s how to enter engineering.
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What is the difference between a traditional and digital engineer?
Say the word ‘engineer’ and you’ll probably think of someone working building a machine or a road. That’s a traditional engineer’s role.
It’s usually split into sub-disciplines including civil engineers who create buildings, roads and other infrastructure, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers and even nuclear engineers.
Digital engineers also create but they design and build software systems so organisations can run their IT programmes.
What kind of pay can I make as an engineer?
The average pay for a traditional engineer is £38,900.
Starting pay for qualified engineers is around £25,000 but chief engineers can comfortably make over £100,000.
The average software engineer salary is £52,500 but entry-level pay is high too, at around £42,000. Experienced workers make up to £75,000 a year.
What are the routes to working as an engineer?
Most traditional engineering jobs require a degree, so you can either study engineering at University then move into a job, or take a degree apprenticeship and ‘earn as you learn’.
To get on to an engineering-related degree, you will usually require a minimum of two A levels, with three A levels and A/B grades required for the most popular courses.
To become a software engineer, you could do a foundation degree, higher national diploma or a degree in computer science. Discover the best route for you at: .
What prospects are there for climbing the career ladder?
What You’ll Do: You will deliver excellent and timely customer outcomes through continuous development and delivery, contributing improvements to development standards and practices with a goal of increasing the quality and efficiency of delivery.
Production Engineer, Babcock International, Plymouth
Can you produce the goods? Then this is an outstanding first or second job.
The Job: Babcock International is hiring a at its Davenport site.
Cloud Engineer, ubs, London
This cloud engineering role job has much more to offer than a silver lining!
What You’ll Do: Working collaboratively across the organisation, you will help design and build next-generation business applications, you will write high-quality, reusable code, write professional, clear and comprehensive documentation; and apply best development and DevOps practices, effectively utilising available technologies.
You’ll Need: A background in development using a major language such as Python, Golang, Java, C# or JavaScript, and proven experience using tools such as Terraform, Azure DevOps, GitLab Cl, Maven, Gradle, Jenkins and TeamCity. You will be used to making contributions to open- or inner-source projects and have worked with scripting languages including Windows PowerShell and Bash.