{ "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register", "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/engineers-all-other/", "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": "Engineers, All Other", "soc_code": "17-2199", "category": "Engineering", "us_employment": 154070, "median_annual_wage": 122930 }, "verdict": "EXPOSED", "risk_resistance": 48, "contested": false, "near_boundary": false, "dimensions": { "task_resistance": 11, "embodiment": 9, "liability_shield": 7, "trust_premium": 8, "judgment_accountability": 13 }, "reasoning": { "task_resistance": "An 11 reflects the split where tolerance stacks, FEA/optical model setup, requirements traceability matrices, and test-report drafting are already being handed to AI-assisted tooling, while aligning a laser bench, instrumenting a prototype, and working out why a robot cell drifts after 400 cycles still demand someone in the lab — if the work were purely simulation and documentation it would sit near 5, and if it were mostly field commissioning it would clear 15.", "embodiment": "A 9 puts most of these engineers in a lab, test cell, or plant floor rather than an uncontrolled site: you do handle hardware, fixtures, oscilloscopes, and environmental chambers, but the conditions are engineered ones you control, unlike a wind-turbine or pipeline engineer climbing structures in weather, who would score in the mid-teens.", "liability_shield": "A 7 is the industrial exemption in practice — an EIT or a degree plus an internal design-review sign-off is what gates your work, and the PE stamp that would push this past 12 is only needed by the minority of you touching public works or offering services to the public.", "trust_premium": "An 8 recognises that program managers and customer engineering teams come back to you by name because you know the failure history of the platform, but your deliverable is a validated design, a test report, or a working subsystem that another competent engineer could take over — the relationship shortens the ramp-up, it is not the product.", "judgment_accountability": "A 13 sits at the top of real discretion: you decide whether a marginal qualification result is a real failure or a fixture artifact, whether to accept a supplier deviation, and when a design is ready for release — calls that get scrutinised in review boards and root-cause investigations, but that a chief engineer or safety authority formally owns rather than you." }, "rationale": "This is a catch-all bucket — photonics, optical, robotics, energy, validation, systems and reliability engineers — so the modal worker is a degreed non-PE engineer splitting time between simulation/analysis on a screen, test-and-measurement in a lab or plant, and specification and report writing. The screen half (parametric calcs, tolerance studies, requirements documents, test-report drafting, data reduction, code for instrumentation) is exactly where AI is already usable, while the bench-and-field half — building the test rig, diagnosing why the prototype fails, signing off that a design is safe to build — holds. Most of these engineers work under the industrial exemption, so there is no license forcing a human signature on their output.", "outlook": "Headcount per project falls as AI absorbs analysis and documentation, and the surviving roles concentrate in hardware validation, failure investigation, and design accountability.", "what_would_raise_it": { "levers": [ { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Narrowing or repeal of the state industrial exemption so that in-house engineering work on products affecting public safety must be sealed by a licensed PE — NCEES has repeatedly floated exemption reform, and states like Texas and Ohio have live debates. A narrower version already in motion: FAA Organization Designation Authorization reform after the 737 MAX (Aircraft Certification, Safety, and Accountability Act of 2020) putting named engineering unit members personally on the hook for compliance findings.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 5 }, { "dimension": "liability_shield", "change": "Functional-safety and cyber regimes that require a named, competent human as accountable signer: ISO 26262/26580 safety-case sign-off, IEC 61508 functional safety manager, EU Machinery Regulation 2023/1230 and the AI Act requiring identified natural persons for conformity assessment and technical files on high-risk machinery. If audit practice hardens into 'AI-generated analysis may not constitute the evidentiary basis without human-attested verification', the signature becomes non-delegable.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 4 }, { "dimension": "judgment_accountability", "change": "Post-incident regimes that name individual engineers in the accountability chain — e.g. NTSB/CSB recommendations, DOE nuclear/grid interconnection reviews, or an insurer requiring a named engineer of record on a validation protocol before writing product-liability coverage. Also plausible: FDA design-control expectations naming a responsible engineer for verification of AI-assisted design outputs.", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "task_resistance", "change": "Genuine two-tier structure: if parametric calcs, tolerance stacks, requirement drafting and test-report generation are absorbed, the residual is failure diagnosis on real hardware, test-rig design, deciding which anomaly matters, and choosing what to measure. That residual tier is the harder half and its share of the day rises mechanically without any legal change.", "plausibility": "already happening", "would_add": 3 }, { "dimension": "embodiment", "change": "Shift of role weight toward bench and field work — commissioning, hardware-in-the-loop bring-up, root-cause teardown, environmental and EMC test campaigns — as screen tasks compress. No new institution required; the bucket already includes heavy lab-resident specialties (photonics alignment, robotics integration, reliability HALT/HASS).", "plausibility": "plausible", "would_add": 2 } ], "ceiling_note": "Trust premium has no realistic route here: buyers of this work are employers and OEM customers who purchase certified outcomes and test data, not a named human's craft, so there is no visible channel through which anyone pays extra for human authorship. The liability levers are also the only large ones, and industrial-exemption reform has been proposed and defeated repeatedly for decades — the safety-case and conformity-assessment route is far more likely than PE licensure spreading. Even fully realized, the occupation is too heterogeneous for any single lever to lift the whole bucket; photonics and nuclear-adjacent engineers could gain most of this while validation and data-reduction roles gain none." }, "adjudication": null, "employment_history": { "points": [ { "y": 2017, "emp": 131500, "wage": 97250 }, { "y": 2018, "emp": 142030, "wage": 96980 }, { "y": 2019, "emp": 152340, "wage": 99040 }, { "y": 2020, "emp": 152380, "wage": 103380 }, { "y": 2021, "emp": 151940, "wage": 100640 }, { "y": 2022, "emp": 150420, "wage": 104600 }, { "y": 2023, "emp": 150990, "wage": 111970 }, { "y": 2024, "emp": 150750, "wage": 117750 }, { "y": 2025, "emp": 154070, "wage": 122930 } ], "from": 2017, "to": 2025, "change_pct": 17.2, "comparable_from": 2019, "spans_soc_revision": true }, "pivots": [ { "slug": "nuclear-power-reactor-operators", "title": "Nuclear Power Reactor Operators", "verdict": "SAFE", "risk_resistance": 70, "median_wage": 122890, "overlap": 57, "skills_to_close": [ "Operation and Control", "Operations Monitoring", "Troubleshooting", "Monitoring" ] } ], "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms" }