Electrical Jobs: Electrical Engineer

Electricity is ubiquitous from your personal cellular to large transportation systems such as the subway or planes. Since its invention, electricity has made our life much easier and convenient. But electricity would be only an energy source without people creating and maintaining equipments or applications using it. Electrical engineers are the people who create, improve and maintain electronic devices and equipments. Because of the ubiquity of electricity, electrical engineers can be found in any industrial branches of the economy and may work on as many different products as cars, robots, cell phone systems, or lighting and wiring systems in buildings. Indeed, whether you take a look at the personal electronic, plane or automotive industry electrical engineers play a core role designing the circuits and electronics parts, testing designs and improving them.

As the field of work for electrical engineers is wide, there is a common distinction made between an electrical engineer and an electronic engineer. Electrical engineers typically deal with large-scale electrical systems such as power transmission and motor control, whereas electronic engineers typically deal with the study of small-scale electronic systems such as computers and integrated circuits

How to become an electrical engineer? If you want to embrace a career as an electrical engineer, you are generally required to graduate from college in engineering. Just like any other engineering career, you will need to have excellent grade in mathematics and science to study in an engineering schools. Being a science-oriented student is not enough, you will be required to have good skills in English, social studies, and computers. Most recruiters also expect their engineers to be creative, curious, logical, detail-oriented and good team-workers.

In the U.S., there were about 299,000 electrical engineers and electronics engineers in 2004. Most of them worked for companies manufacturing medical device, communications equipment, or electronics. Despite varying greatly from one sector to another, electrical engineers earn in average $67,340. Besides prospects for electrical engineers are very good since jobs are expected to grow about as fast as the average for all occupations through 2014.

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