Future-Proofing Your Engineering Career in the Age of AI

Envato Elements by DC Studio I was talking with a young engineer at our company picnic. He has just graduated college a year ago. We got into a discussion about AI, and he was wondering if he would have to compete with non-engineers who use AI.

In my view, his most significant competition will be with engineers who are more productive and present more creative solutions with the help of AI.

So what is my recommendation to young engineers? Understand that know-how is the gap between ideas and execution. Most engineers work in the implementation phase. It is time to start thinking about the edges – the beginning and end stages.

On the idea generation side, consider: what problems are your customers looking to solve, and how does your current product roadmap address or fail to address them? What story is the marketing team telling about your products? What story do they want to tell? This is where you innovate and come up with new ideas.

On the execution side, there are many issues – from supply chain logistics, production schedules, safety regulations, training sales and distributors, and creating a comprehensive go-to-market communication strategy, not to mention problems exposed during field testing.

Someone who only has ChatGPT as their tool will not succeed in this arena. But an engineer who starts with just their engineering expertise can thrive if they are willing to expand their skillset outwards.