Impactful careers for engineering degree graduates

Considering an engineering degree, currently studying, or already graduated? This guide will take you through some of the most promising career paths you could enter with a background in engineering. Of course, engineering is a broad term, and there are many kinds of engineers and engineering subjects to study. 

In this article, we’ll provide impactful career ideas most relevant for people with backgrounds across a range of engineering disciplines, including computer engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, software engineering, and more. Importantly, these aren’t just any careers. At Probably Good, we believe your career is one of the most significant opportunities you have to make a positive difference. With this in mind, in this article we’ll explore some of the most impactful careers where an engineering degree or major can open doors and potentially offer unique advantages.

Biosecurity engineering 

By biosecurity engineering, we mean engineering jobs focused on mitigating the threat of dangerous global pandemics. As we’ve written about elsewhere, pandemics are a source of enormous harm. For example:

• The Spanish Flu – From 1918-20, a strain of influenza ran rampant across large swathes of the world. During this period, somewhere around 17 to 50 million people died.
• HIV/AIDS – First officially reported in 1981, HIV and AIDS spread rapidly throughout the 1990s, killing millions throughout the world, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa. The disease still kills over 700,000 people per year, and the WHO estimates that over 42 million have died since HIV first emerged.
• COVID-19 – The world’s most recent pandemic, caused by a novel coronavirus, is estimated to have killed over 26 million people as of mid-2024.

This threat is only increasing–in large part because of expanded scientific capabilities. We have a growing ability to study, modify, and create pathogens in ways that were impossible decades ago. This scientific progress brings benefits, but it also introduces new risks. A future pandemic could originate not just from natural sources, but from an accidental release from a research facility, or from someone with malicious intent accessing dangerous materials.

Fortunately, people with a background in engineering can play a meaningful role in helping us to anticipate and address potential pandemics in various ways.

How much impact could you have?

There’s quite a lot the world could improve on in order to better anticipate and defend against pandemics. A few of these possible solutions have a concrete need for engineering expertise, making engineering a very strong subject for those who want to work in this cause area. A few of the most prominent possible improvements include:

• Developing technology to reduce indoor transmission. Improved air purification could remove pathogens from indoor environments much more effectively than they currently do, and some believe that germicidal UV light could also prove effective. Both of these interventions require more technical development–and are a place where engineers could do good.
• Better personal protective equipment (PPE) could make a big difference in protecting healthcare workers and essential personnel, as well as members of the public. Mechanical engineers and materials engineers can play a role in developing this better PPE.
• Improved vaccine platforms could help us develop effective vaccines against new pathogens even faster and more effectively. Biomedical engineering is likely to have a particularly important role to play in this.
• Expanded biological surveillance involves increasing our capacity to monitor potential biological threats and develop an adequate response earlier. Improving existing systems, like wastewater surveillance, as well as developing effective new surveillance techniques and warning systems, can help mitigate threats early on. Various engineering disciplines may be useful in developing and implementing these surveillance systems.

The engineering challenges are significant but solvable. Unlike some global problems that require massive coordination or political will, many biosecurity engineering projects can be implemented relatively independently, making individual contributions more likely to have a real impact.

Biosecurity engineering salaries

In the US, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports an average salary of $106,950 for bioengineers and biomedical engineers as of 2024, though many other kinds of engineering are also relevant to biosecurity.

Getting started in biosecurity engineering

Here are a couple of practical ideas for actions you can take now to test your personal fit and upskill for biosecurity engineering careers.

• Learn more about biosecurity. BlueDot Impact’s pandemics course offers a good foundation in large-scale biosecurity concepts. Understanding the threat landscape and current countermeasures could help you identify where your engineering skills can be most valuable. Kevin Esvelt’s influential report on biorisks also contains a lot of ideas for how we can best combat future biorisks, many of which require engineering expertise to deploy.
• Learn about relevant technologies. Familiarize yourself with current biosafety equipment, detection systems, and decontamination methods. Reading industry publications and technical standards (like those from the CDC or WHO) can give you insight into existing solutions and their limitations.

AI safety engineering 

AI is set to be a hugely transformative technology. As we’ve argued at length elsewhere, AI could be a driver of unprecedented innovation, but the risks of unchecked development are equally significant. Without proper safeguards, AI could lead to large-scale harms, injustices—and even truly catastrophic consequences. 

Technical AI safety–the kind of AI safety you’ll likely be helping with as an engineer-offers one of the most direct ways to mitigate these risks. There’s a host of important questions you could try to tackle on this path. For instance, you might work on interpretability – our ability to decipher how AI models really work, helping our efforts to effectively supervise them. Alternatively, you might work on reducing AI’s vulnerability to “adversarial” attacks, where users trick AI systems into performing unintended behaviors for potentially harmful purposes. 

Several types of engineering are relevant for AI safety, especially software engineering, computer engineering, and machine learning engineering. Combined, these cover a lot of the important technical and theoretical disciplines needed for work in much of AI safety.

On top of this, engineers knowledgeable about the hardware behind AI could also stand to have some impact. So, there are several types of engineering work that can prove helpful for AI safety work.

How much impact could you have?

In short, AI safety can be an incredibly impactful path for people who are a good fit. This is an incredibly important cause area, and engineering work within AI safety could help resolve some of the crucial questions around ensuring that future AI technologies don’t pose a threat.

That said, pursuing a career in AI safety comes with challenges. While some technical issues may be solvable with existing methods, the deeper, more fundamental concerns in AI safety remain complex and difficult. This might make you less confident about having a positive impact in this path, even though AI safety is an important field.

Our sense is also that personal fit is probably very important for how promising AI safety careers might be for you. Your ability to make an impact in this path may depend on your ability to be at the forefront of a complex new technology–so a high degree of interest and ability are helpful.

AI safety engineering salaries

In the US, Glassdoor reports a median salary of $154,856 as of 2025 for machine learning engineers. Jobs in AI development companies are often significantly higher than this average.

Getting into AI safety engineering

Here are a couple of practical ideas for actions you can take now to test your personal fit and upskill for AI safety engineering careers.

• Take an AI safety course. It’s worth getting to know the big questions and challenges in this area before you dive into a career. BlueDot Impact’s AI Safety Fundamentals course is a great introduction that doesn’t require a technical background. For those with more experience (such as those already with a computer science degree), this reading list covers a lot of technical ground relating to AI safety.
• Learn relevant coding skills. Learning coding is going to be important for any kind of software work, but if you’re interested in AI, you can be a little more specific about what you learn. Python is said to be the most common language used in machine learning, so it may be a great place to start–if you study software engineering, you’ll likely encounter Python through your studies. CodeCademy and FreeCodeCamp are two free places to learn Python, but many others exist. Optimizing the courses you take during your degree (if you’re yet to complete one) towards AI-relevant skills is also likely to help a lot.

Other relevant careers

The careers explored above are ones that may be particularly advantageous or impactful to explore for people with degrees or majors in engineering. Here, we’ll give a few quick extra examples of careers that may also be a good fit.

Operations 

Operations professionals ensure everything in an organization functions smoothly and effectively, handling tasks like internal systems management, legal compliance, financial management, project coordination, and logistics. In some important respects, operations staff are often like organizational engineers, making everything run better.

Operations roles can be very impactful, particularly when working for organizations focused on high-priority cause areas. This is because the operational improvements you’ll make will directly amplify your organization’s positive impact. 

Engineering provides a strong background for operations roles–but more in the sense of the mindset you’ll develop as an engineer, rather than your technical knowledge. Your analytical problem-solving skills, attention to detail, and understanding of complex systems should serve you well for optimizing organizational processes. However, it’s unlikely that you’ll be using much of your engineering-specific knowledge in an operations role.

Climate engineering

Climate engineering concerns ways that engineers can help to mitigate and reduce the effects of climate change. As it turns out, there’s quite a lot of useful work that engineers can do in this area. (And to be clear, by climate engineering we mean engineers working to help mitigate climate change–not the controversial practice of geoengineering!). 

From renewable energy systems to carbon capture technologies, engineering is an important part of the world transitioning to sustainable sources of energy, food, and manufacturing. Key areas where engineers could work on climate include improving clean energy generation, carbon removal technologies, climate-friendly materials (like improved concrete and steel), among many other things.

Somewhat relatedly, engineering work within alternative proteins could help reduce emissions (and improve animal welfare) by helping more customers to shift away from carbon-intensive animal food products.

However, we think climate change is a less neglected area on average than cause areas like AI safety and biosecurity. This may make it harder to have a meaningful positive impact as an individual. If you’re passionate about working on climate change, we’d recommend thinking carefully about the biggest priorities within the field where you’ll best be able to use your skills for good.

Earning to give

One way to have a great positive impact, whatever career you’re in, is to give money to effective charities, which can do impressive work with your donations. For example, here are just a few things you could achieve with a $5,000 donation:

• Save a child’s life through funding Evidence Action’s chlorine dispenser program that helps sanitize water in regions without easy access to clean water. 
• Double the annual household income for five families through GiveDirectly, who provide direct cash transfers for people in extreme poverty.
• Fund a highly effective climate organization like the Clean Air Task Force, who have influenced the uptake of significant climate action by the US and members of the COP. 
• Fund important research and advocacy to combat the most important risks from emerging technologies, like artificial intelligence and biotechnology, through an expert-managed fund that finds the most promising recipients for the money.
• Prevent 3,000 children from experiencing lead poisoning through the Lead Exposure Elimination Project, which helps governments reduce the prevalence of toxic lead paint.

Naturally, these are simplified estimates – but they’re a good indicator of what the best charities can achieve with your money. Because of this, choosing the organizations you want to donate to is a crucial part of your impact within earning to give; get it right, and you can do a huge amount of good.

Going further than this, you can seek higher-paying jobs just to give more away, known as earning to give. This might not be the most intuitive way to have an impact – but we think it could actually be one of the best ways to help others if you’re well-placed to earn a high salary.

Earning to give is a particularly good option for engineering graduates because of the high average salaries. To give a few examples, in the US electrical engineers earn a median salary of $118,780 (as of 2024), industrial engineers earn $101,140, and computer hardware engineers earn $155,020. These are all vastly higher than the average salary in the US. Giving just 10% of this income away could save multiple lives per year!

Roles that build career capital

Regardless of the exact career path you go down, often the best way to have an impactful career over the long term is to focus on building skills and experience – known as career capital – while you’re still early in your career. Counterintuitively, this can mean taking jobs that aren’t directly impactful, but that might put you in a better place to take highly impactful jobs later on. 

Here are a few guidelines for opportunities that can offer strong career capital:

• Jobs that offer strong development. Some roles will let you develop skills more quickly than others. For instance, graduate schemes are often focused on professional development. Small, early-stage organizations can often offer more personal mentorship and opportunities to contribute. 
• Jobs in prestigious organizations. Roles in organizations with strong reputations for excellence will look impressive on your CV; they’ll also often give you experience in a high-performing environment, developing your general professional skills.
• Postgraduate education. Getting further education in your chosen field can unlock more, and sometimes better, opportunities. In engineering, it could help you get roles with even more capacity to make a positive impact–though it’s always worth bearing in mind if it’s worth the financial and time costs.

How does engineering compare to other degrees?

While degrees in the humanities and social sciences typically cultivate critical thinking and communication skills, engineering specifically trains you to design and build tangible solutions to real-world problems. Generally speaking, the engineering jobs we’ve highlighted above are only available to people if you have a background in a relevant form of engineering. So, unsurprisingly, if you think that some form of career in engineering is your best bet for a fulfilling and impactful career, then an engineering degree is a no-brainer. 

Of course, which kind of engineering is a different matter–there are many to choose from. If positive social impact is one of your main goals, it might be worth investigating which cause area you feel is most important to work on, and what kind of engineering work is useful within that cause area. This is likely to change quite a bit across cause areas.

It’s worth bearing in mind, generally speaking, that engineering degrees may not offer as much career flexibility as some other degree subjects or majors. Partly this is because it won’t be as good at teaching you some other valuable skills, like writing and other forms of communication, compared to many other degree subjects. Good communication skills are important both for performing well and getting hired in any career. So, if you study engineering (or have already done so), it may be worth investing time into developing these skills, too.

Expanding your options

It’s important to note that this is just a small selection of the careers that you’ll be in a good position to pursue with a degree in engineering. These are careers that we think have a potential for high positive impact and personal fulfillment, and your degree will put you in a good place to pursue these kinds of jobs.

However, don’t feel limited by these options. Careers are flexible and often take unexpected directions. Your degree will provide a great first step for the jobs discussed in this article, but your true list of options is much larger than it might seem. 

In fact, most graduates (as many as 74%) go into careers unrelated to their degree subject or major. Because of this, it’s well worth keeping an open mind and exploring other paths, too, even if they don’t immediately seem relevant to your education.

What should you do next?

Here are a few suggestions for steps you can take next to plan your career and find great opportunities.

• Read our career advice series for a step-by-step guide on building a career that’s good for you and the world.
• Find great job opportunities on our high-impact job board and explore great internships and fellowships.
• See our career profiles for a full list of impactful careers that we’ve researched.
• Consider applying to our free 1-1 advising service, where we can give you helpful, tailored career advice.