Materials Engineers
On the Job
Materials Engineers evaluate materials and develop machinery to produce specialized materials. They develop new uses for materials. Sometimes they work with many materials, and sometimes they specialize in just one.
Typical Work Tasks
People who work in this career often:
- Determine operational methods.
- Conduct quantitative failure analyses of operational data.
- Evaluate technical data to determine effect on designs or plans.
- Monitor the productivity or efficiency of industrial operations.
- Create models of engineering designs or methods.
- Design industrial processing systems.
- Test characteristics of materials or structures.
- Prepare operational reports.
- Prepare proposal documents.
- Prepare detailed work plans.
Typical Working Conditions
- Using e-mail.
- Working indoors in environmentally controlled conditions.
- Working with a group or team.
- Freedom to make decisions without supervision.
- Wearing common protective or safety equipment such as safety shoes, glasses, gloves, hearing protection, hard hats, or life jackets.
- The importance of being accurate or exact.
- Sitting.
- Meeting strict deadlines.
This page includes information from the O*NET 24.2 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA.
Source: You can learn about our data sources in the About Us section.
