Design and engineering
What does a Mechanical Engineer do?
Working out how something should be built, and drawing it so others can build it.
What the day is like
- Indoors, under a roof.
- Right or wrong, to a standard.
The facts
- Pay
- $104,110 a year, median
- Mechanical Engineers, May 2025
- Usually needs
- Bachelor's degree
- Several years, and usually a formal qualification.
- Jobs
- +11% projected change in jobs, 2025-2035 projections
- Demand looks growing
What is good about it
- It pays well against the rest of the work on this site.
What people find hard about it
- Iteration and rework
- Cost constraints
- Work that stays on a screen
Growing faster than most engineering; expect a degree as the entry ticket.
Will machines take this job?
What machines will do to this work. Drafting and routine calculation are automating; the responsibility for a design that has to stand up is not.
How to find out whether it suits you
Design and build one working mechanism, then measure how far it was off.
Would this actually suit you?
CareerDNA works that out from what you choose rather than from what you say about yourself: two minutes of choosing between real jobs, a few puzzles, and some questions about what you are like. It is free, it saves as you go, and it will tell you plainly where the answer is thin.