Licensing: Your Key to Working Anywhere, at Any Time?

Not every engineering field requires the people practicing it to be licensed. But one field that does is civil engineering, and here's the tale of one man who has just landed his 50th civil engineering license, allowing him to work anywhere in the United States.

Tracy Letzring is also a licensed environmental engineer and registered structural engineer. He fully admits that having all of these licenses gives him and his company a marketing edge over the competition, but in practical matters, it also lets him work for any client in any state or city, and not just in his own neighborhood.

Working in different states requires different knowledge and skills. For example, Letzring says that California's license required him to learn about seismic migration, while he needed to learn about Arctic conditions to land his license in Alaska.

How much do you need to think about licenses in these particular careers? It's up to you. But you do want to plan ahead. It would suck if you had to turn down a job or couldn't land a client because you were licensed in one state but not in its neighbor. Something to consider...

Nuclear Engineering Jobs are Hot

If you're looking for a high-tech career with nowhere to go but up, then you can't go wrong with nuclear engineering.

More than just nuclear power, nuclear engineers are also vital for work in physics, medicine, imaging, and more. It's an essential field, and it's growing. According to a 2008 article from USA Today, there are now five times more nuclear engineering students than there were early in the decade.

If new nuclear power plants get approved in the next few years, it could mean hundreds of new engineering jobs. Heck, worldwide, new nuclear power could result in thousands upon thousands of jobs. That's the expectation in the UK, where 11 new nuclear power plants are currently being debated. (And yes, chances are that the majority of new nuclear jobs will be created outside the U.S., but the States still has the best nuclear training programs, so you're in the right place to make sure you get the best knowledge possible to get started in your career.)

Want to know more? Here's a great profile of a working nuclear engineer, and here's another one from an engineer who's just started out in his field.

Ireland Wants More R&D Workers

Interested in working overseas? Then Ireland might be the place for you. The country is already well-known as one of Europe's technology centers, and now the government has rolled out a new program to make it easier for foreign researchers to work there.

The new Euraxess.ie web portal aims to make it easier for R&D people to take contracts in Ireland, and even to bring their entire families there for the extent of their contract. You won't even need a green card or work permit, that's how much they want you there.

Euraxess is actually EU-wide, but this new Irish version of the portal takes things several steps further that most other European countries and making the country even more attractive to researchers.

Give it a try. But if you get a job there, don't kiss the Blarney Stone. You don't want to know why.

Environmental engineering jobs up 25%

Looking for a specialty for your engineering career? Think green. Environmental engineering jobs are up 25.4% according to a new book, 200 Best Jobs for Renewing America by Laurence Shatkin.

Shatkin's top ten green jobs are full of engineering specialties. Industrial engineer jobs are up more than 20%, geoscience jobs are up 21.9%, and other jobs for environmental scientists and specialists are up more than 25%.

The jobs all pay pretty well, too. According to Shatkin, the average environmental engineering job pays $72,350.

I just did a quick job search on Experience.com, and there are, at this moment, more than 20 jobs that fit into these categories.

Give 'em a look and see what appeals to you!

Are You An Extreme Programmer? Or a Hybrid Champion?

Are you up to a programming challenge? IEEE will once again hold its IEEE Xtreme Programming Challenge this October 24th. Teams will have 24 hours to solve a programming challenge that will be revealed when the competition opens that day at 00:00:00 UTC.

This is specifically for teams at universities with IEEE student branches -- and if you're not already involved in your student branch, you should be.

Interested? Don't delay - if you want to compete, you must register by October 12!

Meanwhile, registration is now open for next summer's Formula Hybrid International Competition. This is a really exciting event, where teams of college and university students design, build, and race high-performance, plug-in hybrid vehicles. It's held at New Hampshire Motor Speedway in Loudon, NH, every year, and attracts teams from all over the world.

Formula Hybrid attracts not only some great minds, but some very interested recruiters, who look to this competition to find their next great automotive engineers. It's a great way to examine green technologies, and a perfect way to practice teamwork and learn from your peers.

Registration for the 2010 Formula Hybrid competition opened this week, and closes in mid-December. That leaves you several months to create your vehicle, time you'll really need. Give it a try!

Any other competitions you're excited about this year? Let us know in the comments section!

Will 'Gandhian Engineering' Influence Your Career?

Have you heard the term "Gandhian Engineering"? This relatively new concept (coined by the New York Times last year when Tata Motors first unveiled its game-changing Nano automobile) describes engineering as a way to change the lives of the world's poor.

As the NYTimes first put it, Gandhian Engineering combines "irreverence for conventional ways of thinking with a frugality born of scarcity." In other words, throw out the old ideas and think of ways to do things inexpensively.

Two statements by Mahatma Gandhi himself help form the core of Gandhian Engineering, which has been embraced by engineers all over the world over the last several months:

• Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.
• I would prize every invention of science made for the benefit for all.

You can learn more about Gandhian Engineering through a free webinar being hosted by IEEE's GOLD (Graduates of the Last Decade) group on October 2. (You do need to be an IEEE member to attend.)

So how do you see this concept of "high performance - low cost" engineering affecting your career or your goals in the future? Let us know and post your thoughts in the comments section!

Engineering degrees lead to the highest salaries

Hey folks, welcome back to the engineering careers blog from Experience.com! Every weeks, we'll take a look at why it's great to be an engineer, and what you have to look forward to as you leave school and get out in the "real world."

First up, here's some encouraging information that should brighten your day, in light of the rotten economy: a new study finds that engineering degrees lead to the highest salaries for all U.S. workers. Aerospace engineering, chemical engineering, computer engineering and electrical engineering took the top four slots in a list of top median salaries compiled by PayScale.com. As for the rest of the top ten, most of them are also engineering-related categories: mechanical engineering, computer science, industrial engineering and environmental engineering.

You need to read a bit more closely into the tables to see what your likely starting salary is likely to be (chemical engineering seems to be the highest for beginners), and PayScale.com also found that your salary could depend on where you went to school -- MIT grads seem to attract the highest starting salaries, while Dartmouth grads garner the biggest medial salaries after they've had 10 or more years of work experience.

In any case, if you're looking for a satisfying salary, engineering is the place to be. (And this makes this the blog to read!)

I'll be back next week with another look at engineering career prospects. Meanwhile, if you have any questions, post them below or email me. I'll try to find some answers and publish them in the weeks to come!