Railway engineers work on rolling stock rather than infrastructure.

Typical tasks include the construction of new carriages or engines, making new parts or repairing and replacing old ones, fitting out carriage interiors, inspecting stock for damage/wear and tear, doing regular safety and maintenance checks on key systems such as brakes and testing major electrical, mechanical and pneumatic systems. Read More

Mechanical engineers design, construct and install machinery, tools and components. They often service machines as well. They work in a wide range of industries, including power, construction and transport.

The industry sector might differ, but mechanical engineers typically work within three areas: R&D; production and design. Read More

Maintenance engineers can be found in a wide variety of job sectors, from manufacturing to transport to food production, but they all work to a common goal – ensuring that equipment and machinery is fully operational.

The job is a mix of proactive prevention and reactive fire-fighting. One day you might be running a service check or quality inspection and the next reacting to an emergency breakdown call. Read More

A defence engineer doesn’t have to join the armed forces, although working for a defence contractor is likely to mean signing a few confidentiality clauses as you’ll be working on the design and construction of military equipment and vehicles.

Modern military equipment is as much about software as hardware, so defence engineers often work on software development and systems engineering as well as in the more traditional engineering realms of production, R&D, electronic and mechanical hardware and the ergonomics behind a particular piece of military kit. Read More

Civil engineers belong to a broad area of engineering that involves a number of specialist disciplines such as structural, environmental, maritime and transportation engineering.

In all civil engineering areas, the work involves liaising with clients and professionals such as architects and planners, using computer modelling software to analyse survey, material-testing and mapping data, determining the environmental impact of a project, preparing tender bids and managing a project both on and off-site once it is given the go-ahead. Read More

Chemical engineers generally work either in manufacturing or research and development (R&D). In smaller companies, the two roles are sometimes combined.

Manufacturing roles involve working on day-to-day operations in a processing plant, checking on production and dealing with any issues that arise, liaising with the health and safety and quality control departments and working with designers and engineers to develop new machinery and equipment. Read More

Automotive engineers work in three distinct areas – production, design or development.

Production engineers typically work on redesigning the machine tools, processes and equipment used to make new parts. Overseeing quality control and production costs and schedules are also a major part of the job. Read More

Aerospace engineers tend to work in one of three areas – testing, research and development, and maintenance and production.

Duties include developing specific avionic systems, creating more fuel-efficient parts or engines, data collection and analysis, drawing up project plans using computer software, running flight and ground tests on prototypes, writing reports and manuals and presenting findings to both managers and clients. Read More