What are Engineers?
What do Engineers do?
Engineers apply creativity and problem solving to try to improve our lives. They tackle major challenges faced by society aiming to find sustainable effective solutions. Everything we use has involved an engineer somewhere in the design, production or delivery, from the clothes we wear, the food we eat, our means of communication and entertainment, medical treatments, infrastructure, energy supply and our transport mechanisms to toys, sports equipment and musical instruments.
Our engineers explore the world from the depths of the sea to outer space, from our blood to our brains, from miniscule nanoscale atomic structures to massive structures like wind turbines. They work in areas like renewable energy, artificial intelligence, medical technologies, water safety, construction and transport, solving problems to improve products and processes and develop the technology of tomorrow. Our engineers can be found in research labs, on factory production lines, working on computers, teaching students or out collecting soil or water samples or talking to the public who will use their products. Find out who is inspired by nature to design better materials, who helps keep us healthy, and who is aiming to revolutionise infrastructure to withstand future challenges.
What are Engineers like?
Engineering is highly varied and so are the people who work in engineering. The most common personal characteristics named by our engineers were passion, creativity, good communication skills, a love of problem solving, curiosity, determination, persistence and cooperation. Outside work our engineers have a wide range of different interests including sports, dance, crafts, baking, computer games, music, reading, playing board games, and all of them could see links between their hobbies and skills they use in engineering. Find out who loves playing Lego, who has danced all over the world and who is the best at baking cakes.
Why do Engineering?
Our engineers love the opportunities offered to them by engineering, especially the chance to make a difference in society, to help people and the planet, to imagine and work towards a better future. They also appreciate the satisfaction of solving problems and the joy of seeing an idea go from design to real-life product. Our engineers love working collaboratively, finding out how things work and learning new things. Find out who is never bored due to the variety within engineering, who thinks creativity is the best bit about engineering, and who wants to save the world.