Question: what qualifications do you need to become an engineer, and how long did it take you to realise that this was to be your career?

Christopher Bullock answered on 16 Jun 2017:

There are many ways to start an engineering career but I think most professional engineers are university graduates, many of whom will have done a 4-year MEng degree. However, it is equally possible to become an engineer with a shorter 3-year degree or no degree.

Once you graduate, this is not the end of your training – you will be continually learning and developing your skills on the job. The qualification that sets engineers apart as ones who have completed their training is known as Chartered Status, CEng, people who have this are known as Chartered Engineers. This is not a qualifaction awarded by a university but is instead
awarded by one several professional engineering institutions and is not based on exams but what you have done in your career as an engineer. In most cases, people with this qualification will have been working as engineers for 8-10 years. It is something that I have not yet done, so you could say that I am still not a qualified engineer, but I do hope to do during my career.

I think most people who take engineering degrees want to go on to do this as their career, I’d say 75% of my friends from university who studied engineering are now working as engineers. So I guess the answer to your question as to when I decided to do it as a career was when I decided that it was the degree that I wanted to do. I think I was 17 or 18 at the time.