What does an average day in a life of a mechanical engineer look like?

Hi Cooper,

This is a great question to ask before you consider taking steps towards college and full time jobs. Knowing what a job actually does may be different from what people think or what is taught in school.

An average day for a Mechanical Engineer or ME may include many different tasks which require many different skills. I will share just a few for you:

In my experience the most important task you will have is to effectively communicate with the other professionals you work with. This could mean sending well written emails with proper documentation and explanation of the matter at hand. Someone can not make progress in the working world if their teammates do not understand what they are working on. This is why achieving good reading and writing skills is essential to MEs as well as math and science.

Secondly you may be called to make recommendations about equipment, parts, processes or other mechanical systems that will require you to think back on your extensive math and science understanding. This might include conducting research, making calculations, or taking inspections that help you arrive at good decision. The math and science behind a engineer is what makes them an effective tool for problem solving in the mechanical role. Finding an area in school that you are especially good at will help give you an idea what mechanical field you might be enjoy. Whether it is automotive, air conditioning, or power plants if you enjoy what you do you will naturally be a better engineer without feeling the struggle of being at work.

Next a ME will have to problem solve. A ME may be involved with an aspect of a company that is just "okay" as an engineer you will be used to trying to make things the best they can be. Many times you will have to balance gaining strength in one area of a product or system and not letting the other areas becoming to weak. For example If you have a wheel that needs to be faster, you could reduce the weight. But if the weight is reduced too much you might have a wheel that is too fragile. There is always a balancing point and engineers are usually tasked with finding that point. This information may be found through the use of computer drawing programs or computer calculations programs which you will learn about through college and job training.

These are just some of the things you may encounter as a Mechanical Engineer. I hope you continue your journey to be an engineer! It can sometime be challenging but if you study hard and don't give up you will be successful.

Good Luck

The mechanical engineering field is very diverse - the people who work in this field are involved in many things. A few of those are the design of autos, aircraft, spacecraft, energy systems, and a wide variety of machines. Mechanical engineers also are involved in the testing and manufacturing of the things listed above. There are other areas in which mechanical engineers work as well.

Because of this, it's hard to describe a typical day, but the majority of the work is done in an office setting. Much of design work today is done on computer-aided design systems (CAD) and many calculations are done with the assistance of computers, so that may give you some idea of the work day.

Some engineering work is done in "the field", meaning outdoors at an energy plant or test site, for example.

It's also common that mechanical engineers supervise other engineers and non-engineers once they gain some experience, and that involves dealing with people more than individual design-type work does.

So, it is a wide field, but I hope this helps clarify things a little bit. Please post with additional questions if you have them. Good luck and take your schoolwork seriously; this will be important to you later!

I worked for over 30 years as a mechanical engineer, with five different job descriptions. My first job was at a naval shipyard, responsible for troubleshooting equipment problems on various equipment (pumps, oil purifiers, condensers, turbines, propeller shafting, etc.). I never knew from day to day what I might have to work on. I loved this job - it was very high pressure.
My next job was as a project manager responsible for overseeing inspections of navy nuclear steam generators (radioactive environment). This job was also high pressure due to the high cost and schedule impacts (there were only so many days to get the job done, so every contingency had to be planned for, and problems solved immediately).
My next job was as a sourcing quality engineer responsible for determining whether sub suppliers were building equipment to my employer's specifications. I traveled to eight different countries and 24 different states.
Then I worked as project manager again responsible for removing equipment used in the first pilot plant used to recover uranium from "spent" fuel rods. The pilot plant was decommissioned and was scheduled to be demolished.
I ended my career as a technical lead engineer and later as engineering manager of a small (less than 90 employees) manufacturing firm. This company built equipment used in power plants (natural gas and or oil). This included pumps, filters, heaters, and other industrial sized equipment.
It was all very interesting and enjoyable.