EXPOSED
A large slice of the EE workday — writing specs, running load and thermal calculations, generating and checking schematics, drafting test plans, writing firmware and MATLAB/Python analysis, producing compliance documentation — is exactly the structured text-and-math work AI now does at usable quality, and EDA vendors are embedding it directly into the tools. What holds is the bench and field half: bringing up a board that fails for reasons no model predicted, probing with a scope, commissioning switchgear on site, and owning the decision that a design is safe to energize or ship. The modal worker here is an electronics/power designer without a PE; the stamped-drawing shield applies mainly to the power and building-systems tier, and it is regulatory rather than technical.
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier. Schematic capture, load-flow and thermal calcs, timing analysis, firmware, and NEC/IEC compliance write-ups are now credibly co-authored by tools, but the irreducible half — bringing up a first article that draws 3A when the model said 300mA, chasing an EMI failure at the test house, tuning a control loop against a real plant — keeps this at 11 rather than the 6 or 7 you'd assign a pure calculation-and-documentation role.
Some physical or field component. An 8 reflects that most EEs are at a workstation in Altium or Cadence most weeks, but periodically at a bench with a scope, thermal camera and soldering iron, or in a plant during commissioning and factory acceptance testing — real hands-on hours, in controlled labs rather than the uncontrolled roofs and trenches that earn 13+.
Certification preferred, not legally required. The PE licence exists and genuinely binds the power, utility interconnection and building-systems tier who stamp one-lines and coordination studies, but the modal electronics or embedded EE ships product under UL/FCC/CE conformity with the company as the responsible party and no personal licence at all — that split lands at 10, not the 15 a uniformly stamped discipline would get.
Some relationship component. Design reviews, vendor and FAE relationships, and being the engineer a program manager trusts with the risky subsystem carry real weight, but the deliverable is a netlist, a spec and a passing test report that another competent EE could have produced and that gets judged on measurements rather than on who signed it — hence 9.
Exists to be accountable for ambiguous calls. A 14 is earned by the calls that have no procedure: derating a part below datasheet limits for a 15-year field life, declaring an arc-flash boundary, signing off that a lithium pack's protection scheme is adequate, or authorizing first energization of switchgear with people standing nearby — decisions where being wrong burns hardware, kills a program schedule, or kills someone.
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