Job market for engineer physicists

[rfranceschetti]

Hi all,

Could you guys tell me how's the job market* for engineer physicists and engineer scientists? These majors seem very nice in terms of the range of the coursework, seeing many different parts of physics and chemistry. However, I'm quite skeptic about their career prospects. I see Universities claiming those engineers could work virtually in anything involving physics, but I'm not so sure that's true.

*in your country, doesn't have to be any place specifically.

Thanks

 

[Rika]

If you can work in "anything involving physics" you actually can't work anywhere. From my perspective (Poland) it's not good. It's neither "proper" engineering degree that teaches you profession nor solid pure physics degree that allows you to get into very good PhD program. You have a little bit of everything - physics, chemistry, biophysics, computational physics, electronics but not on good enough level to become an expert, specialist. Employers want somebody who actually can do his/her job rather than somebody who has bunch of different sophomore-level classes from various engineering fields under their belt.

So I would say go for normal engineering major and if you can add some physics/different engineering field classes into it.

 

[Vanadium 50]

I think you have to be more specific about which country. You use the phrases "engineer physicists" and "engineer scientists", either of which is in common use in the US and then call them "engineers", also not in common use.

 

[rfranceschetti]

I think you have to be more specific about which country. You use the phrases "engineer physicists" and "engineer scientists", either of which is in common use in the US and then call them "engineers", also not in common use.

Sorry, I did not quite understand.

 

[Orodruin]

Sorry, I did not quite understand.

He wants you to specify what country you are talking about. It is very important.

Where I come from, engineering physics is among the most valued educations among employers. Not because they have necessarily learned exactly the skills the employers need, but because they have learned to acquire new skills quickly and to have a scientific and logical mindset.

 

[rfranceschetti]

Oh, okay. I'm from Brazil, and here Engineering physics is pretty much a new course. The program seems attractive, but the job market here for that engineering is not very mature yet. Embraer, which is the largest company in the aeronautics industry here, hires quite a few, but to perform things that an EE could do as well (related to electronics, basically). Companies in the medical sector also hire. But the curriculum is basically a physics program with a few EE courses.

So I was wondering how is it in other countries.

 

[Rika]

We talked a lot about it in thread "is physics degree worth pursuing?" in this section. From what I have learned about other countries:

- the better economy and more advanced industry is (low unemployment rate, big R&D industry like Germany)
- the more elite higher education is (only top 10-20% goes to university)
- the better engineering physics program is (like being elite, fameous, well-established program)

the higher chance of sucess you have.