EXPOSED
The desk half of this job — datasheet trawling, block diagrams, component selection, SPICE setup, register maps, test plans, compliance paperwork, and glue firmware — is exactly what current models do at usable quality, and EDA vendors are shipping AI layout and verification assistants into the tools. The half that holds is bench reality: an analog front end that oscillates, EMI that only shows up in the chamber, a thermal problem in the enclosure, a board that passes sim and fails at -40C. Licensure is a weak moat here because the industrial exemption means most electronics engineers never stamp anything, so protection comes from debug skill and owning safety-critical design calls rather than from a seal.
Part 2020 shock, part continued decline in the years since.
Median pay $105,570 → $130,220 -1.3% in real terms
This line is counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the one figure on this page that isn't a judgement of ours. Headcount moves on demand, offshoring, demographics and the business cycle, and automation is one term among several, often not the loudest.
So a falling line is not evidence that AI did it, and a rising one is not evidence that it won't. Both happen in this register: some occupations resist automation and shrink anyway, others are highly automatable and keep growing. The marked year is 2020.
BLS projection, 2024–2034
+6.2% 95,900 → 101,800 on the projections basis
Growing, and only partly exposed
The BLS expects +6.2% more of these jobs by 2034, and at 46/100 the work is only partly exposed — some tasks are automatable, the core of the job is not. Nothing here is in tension.
Different clocks. The score is what current AI could do to this work today. The projection is how many of these jobs will exist in 2034. Everything between the two — how fast employers actually adopt, whether demand grows in the meantime — is why they can point opposite ways without either being wrong.
~5,700 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
EngineerTest EngineerField EngineerRadar EngineerDesign EngineerSignal EngineerSystem EngineerAntenna EngineerCircuit DesignerProduct EngineerWireless EngineerEquipment EngineerMicrowave EngineerAutomation EngineerCommercial EngineerDeployment EngineerElectrical EngineerEvaluation EngineerAudio Visual ManagerDevice Test EngineerTransmitter EngineerElectrophonic EngineerField Service EngineerOutside Plant Engineer
Holding it up: judgment & accountability . Weakest point: liability shield .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier Schematic capture from a known topology, BOM selection against datasheet parameters, SPICE sweeps, register-map documentation, and DO-160/61000 test-plan drafting are already being generated at usable quality, but bringing up a switching supply that ripples at 300kHz, chasing a ground-loop that only appears with the motor running, or correlating a failed radiated-emissions scan to a specific clock harmonic still takes someone at the bench with a scope probe — that split is why this sits at 11 rather than in the resistant band.
Some physical or field component You are not in a trench, but you are also not screen-only: probing a live board, reworking 0402s and BGAs with hot air, sitting in the anechoic chamber with a spectrum analyzer, running thermal chambers to -40C and 85C, and crawling into an enclosure to find where the harness couples noise are recurring days, and that intermittent-but-real hands-on load is a 9 rather than a 15 because the environment is a lab you control, not a rooftop or a refinery.
Certification preferred, not legally required The industrial exemption in nearly every state PE statute means the vast majority of electronics engineers design, release, and ship products without ever stamping a drawing, so the enforceable barrier is your employer's design-review process and standards like IEC 60601 or ISO 26262 — the 6 credits the fact that safety-critical and utility-adjacent work does occasionally demand a licensed signatory, not that most of you carry one.
Meaningful discretion Deciding a derating margin, accepting a part with a 20-year EOL risk, signing off that an isolation barrier meets creepage under pollution degree 2, or calling a field-failure root cause fixed are decisions with recall-scale consequences and no procedure that settles them, which puts this at the top of the discretion band — short of 14+ only because those calls typically pass through a design review board rather than resting on you alone.
The verdict above describes this occupation as a whole. Almost nobody does the typical version of a job — tick what's actually in your week and see how your own mix sits.
Your task mix speaks to task resistance (11/20 here) — how much of the day's work current AI already does. That is the dimension the boxes above are about.
It cannot move the other three. Liability shield (6/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (7/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (13/20) is whether the role exists to own consequential calls. Those are facts about the occupation's standing, not about which tasks are in your week — a paralegal who does only trial exhibits still holds no licence. Together they are 26 of this occupation's 46 points (57%).
Embodiment (9/20) is also a property of the work rather than the worker, but we don't tag individual tasks as physical or not, so the picker can't tell you anything about it. That's a limit of this tool, not a claim.
Did we get the list right? Tell us what's missing — the tasks are written from the outside, and you're reading this from the inside.
Nuclear Engineers EXPOSED
The moves above are yours to make. This is the other half: what would have to change in the world for the occupation itself to score higher. None of it is in any one person's gift, but it is where the floor actually comes from. Scores here are not a one-way ratchet. Only two of the five dimensions — task resistance and embodiment — track what machines can do. The other three track law, what buyers will pay for, and who is answerable, and those move in both directions, often in response to the same pressure AI creates. If every lever below landed, this occupation would score around 66/100, still EXPOSED.
EU Cyber Resilience Act and RED Article 3(3) cybersecurity obligations force a named responsible person behind the Declaration of Conformity for connected hardware; if firms designate the lead electronics engineer as the accountable signer for security-relevant hardware design decisions (secure boot, key storage, debug-port lockdown), the role formally owns consequential calls it currently makes informally.
Task-mix shift: this occupation genuinely has two tiers. If EDA AI assistants absorb schematic capture, component selection, register maps, SPICE setup and testbench generation, the residual job concentrates in the tier models do worst — root-causing an oscillating analog loop, chasing EMI that only appears in the anechoic chamber, thermal derating in a real enclosure, corner-case failures at -40C, and second-source respins under allocation. Resistance rises only if firms keep those tasks with the same job title rather than splitting off a separate 'hardware validation' occupation.
Functional-safety and airworthiness regimes attaching personal, named sign-off to electronics design: DO-254 avionics hardware approvals via FAA Designated Engineering Representatives, ISO 26262 / IEC 61508 'competent person' safety-case signature, and FDA design-history-file review signatures on Class II/III device electronics. If auditors and notified bodies begin requiring that AI-generated schematics, FPGA/ASIC logic, and verification evidence be attested by a named engineer who accepts personal responsibility for the tool qualification (DO-330-style), the shield rises materially for the safety-critical slice of the occupation.
Role absorption of lab and chamber work: if headcount cuts on the desk tier leave the remaining engineers personally running EMC pre-compliance sweeps, thermal chambers, HALT/HASS, oscilloscope/VNA probing on live boards, and field failure teardowns, the physical share of the day rises. This is a redefinition of the job's day, not a new capability barrier, so the gain is modest.
Provenance requirements in defense and space: ITAR/DFARS and NASA/DoD contract clauses requiring documented human authorship and traceability of design artifacts, plus prohibitions on submitting technical data to non-accredited AI tools, would make a human-authored design a purchased attribute rather than a preference. Narrow — applies to cleared programs, not commercial consumer electronics.
Narrowing of the state industrial exemption. NCEES and several state boards have repeatedly floated limiting the manufacturing exemption; a state adopting PE-stamp requirements for electronics in life-safety systems (fire alarm, medical, utility-connected power electronics, EV charging infrastructure) would create an actual seal where today there is none. Watch state licensure bills and NFPA 72 fire-alarm design-document rules, which already push toward stamped electrical design.
The limit. The industrial exemption is the binding constraint: absent it, no seal exists for most of these 96,900 workers, and the liability levers above only reach the safety-critical minority (avionics, medical, automotive, utility). Commercial and consumer electronics design has no realistic route to a trust premium — buyers pay for a working, cheap board, not a human-drawn one. Realistic ceiling for the occupation as a whole is the high 50s; individual safety-critical niches can go considerably higher while the median consumer-hardware role does not move.
| San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | 5,970 | $194,370 +49% |
| Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | 5,460 | $142,920 +10% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 4,880 | $140,530 +8% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 4,200 | $135,150 +4% |
| Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO | 3,810 | $127,260 -2% |
| San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, CA | 3,450 | $156,480 +20% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 2,690 | $140,000 +8% |
| Detroit-Warren-Dearborn, MI | 2,310 | $128,650 -1% |
| San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | 5,970 | $194,370 +49% |
| Santa Cruz-Watsonville, CA | 30 | $182,840 +40% |
| Santa Rosa-Petaluma, CA | 290 | $172,290 +32% |
We have no reported case of a named organisation automating this occupation. Not one deployment, not one announcement.
That is worth saying out loud next to a score of 46. The verdict above is about what the work exposes — what current AI could do to these tasks. It is not a claim that anyone has done it. For this occupation those two things have come apart completely: the capability argument is on this page, and the evidence column is empty.
Has AI actually changed your work? One tap, anonymous, and the running tally is public. Nothing else is asked of you.
Rather than check back: get the digest and we'll tell you what changed — or watch a single occupation from its own page.