{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/electrical-engineers/",
  "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology",
  "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.",
  "scored_at": "2026-08-11",
  "model": "claude-opus-5",
  "occupation": {
    "title": "Electrical Engineers",
    "soc_code": "17-2071",
    "category": "Engineering",
    "us_employment": 198750,
    "median_annual_wage": 120630
  },
  "verdict": "EXPOSED",
  "risk_resistance": 52,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 11,
    "embodiment": 8,
    "liability_shield": 10,
    "trust_premium": 9,
    "judgment_accountability": 14
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "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.",
    "embodiment": "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+.",
    "liability_shield": "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.",
    "trust_premium": "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.",
    "judgment_accountability": "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."
  },
  "rationale": "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.",
  "outlook": "Headcount per project falls as AI absorbs calculations, documentation and first-pass schematics, while demand shifts toward licensed power engineers and hands-on hardware debug/commissioning specialists who can be held responsible.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "State PE licensure boards narrowing or eliminating the 'industrial exemption' that lets unlicensed engineers do in-house design — NCEES model law already pushes this, and states like Texas and North Carolina periodically revisit it. If electrical design for utility interconnection, data center power, or EV charging infrastructure required a PE seal from the responsible designer rather than a reviewing consultant, the shield extends from the building-systems tier into the modal electronics/power design job. Also watch IEEE 1547 / utility interconnection rules and NFPA 70E arc-flash study requirements naming a licensed engineer as the signer of AI-produced coordination studies.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 5
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Functional-safety and cyber regimes formalizing a named human 'responsible engineer' for hazard sign-off: ISO 26262/IEC 61508 safety-case attestation, FDA 510(k) electrical safety, and the EU Cyber Resilience Act's requirement for an identified responsible person for product security. If auditors require a named engineer to attest that AI-generated calculations and firmware were independently verified, the accountability sits with a person by rule rather than by custom.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Genuine two-tier structure here: if EDA-embedded generation absorbs schematic capture, load/thermal calc, and compliance doc drafting, the residual day is bench bring-up, EMC debug, signal-integrity anomalies, and root-cause on failures with no clean model. That residual tier is the part current AI cannot do at usable quality, and task_resistance rises as a share even as absolute automatable work grows.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "embodiment",
        "change": "Task-mix shift toward commissioning and field diagnostics — substation and switchgear commissioning, grid interconnection witness testing, data center power-up — as design hours shrink. Utility and NERC witness-test requirements that a qualified engineer be physically present during energization would harden this.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "No plausible route on trust_premium: buyers of electrical design purchase a working, certified product, not a human's touch, and no client-facing brand attaches to the engineer. Any premium that appears will be for the seal or the attestation, which belongs under liability_shield."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2017,
        "emp": 183370,
        "wage": 95060
      },
      {
        "y": 2018,
        "emp": 186490,
        "wage": 96640
      },
      {
        "y": 2019,
        "emp": 185570,
        "wage": 98530
      },
      {
        "y": 2020,
        "emp": 185220,
        "wage": 100830
      },
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 186020,
        "wage": 100420
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 182210,
        "wage": 103320
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 185430,
        "wage": 106950
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 188790,
        "wage": 111910
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 198750,
        "wage": 120630
      }
    ],
    "from": 2017,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 8.4,
    "comparable_from": 2019,
    "spans_soc_revision": true
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}