Also called: Joining Engineer, Welding Process Engineer
Designs welding procedures and joints for pipelines, ships, bridges and rockets.
You develop a new procedure for welding rocket fuel tanks: the settings, the filler metal, the order of passes. Test welds get cut, polished and X-rayed until you're sure there are no hidden flaws.
Only a few universities offer welding engineering, so grads are in demand.
Approximate: anchored on Bureau of Labor Statistics data for a broader job group.
Bachelor's degree (4-year), about 4 years after high school. Bachelor's in welding engineering or materials engineering; AWS CWE certification.
Ways in: 4-year college, Certification. Training cost: $15k – $60k.
Majors to look at: Welding Engineering, Materials Science & Engineering.
Growing faster than average (about 6% over 10 years).
Low risk for 10 years. Robotic welding grows, which raises demand for engineers who design procedures and set up robots; shop testing stays human.
Classes: Welding CTE, Physics, Chemistry, Algebra II.
Official data: O*NET occupation 17-2131.
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