Wanting a highly technical job as my first Mechanical Engineering role
I graduated in July 2025, but I only started seriously searching for engineering jobs about three months ago. The reason for the gap is that I wanted to honor the last year of my Army Reserve commitment without it causing disruptions with a new job.
During that year, I tried to continue developing my skills. I passed the FE exam and completed some additional CAD and PLC certifications.
My original goal was to land a highly technical entry-level engineering position where I could develop strong engineering skills early in my career. Now that I'm actually in the job market, I'm realizing that may not happen.
I have an interview next week with big engineering company. The position is still an engineering role, but from my initial conversation with the team, it sounds like the job involves more coordination, component selection, working with vendors/suppliers.
I will most likely take the job if I receive an offer but I wanted to ask engineers who started their careers in positions that weren't exactly what they wanted. Were you able to transition into something more technical later? What did you do to make that transition? I wanted to also ask how may one adapt to these kind of role?