Jobs with a Computer Engineering Degree

[whoareyou]

I've been doing some research for a project and I've found out that computer engineering can be split into computer software engineering and computer hardware engineering. From what I've researched, everything is mainly computer software engineering, like building game engines, physics engines etc., and there are plenty of job postings for that kind of work in the Toronto region. However, I cannot find anything related to computer hardware engineering. I feel that coding shouldn't be all that a computer engineer is restricted to. Does anyone know of any kinds of jobs or work in the GTA that would require the hardware portion of computer engineering?

[mirhagk]

Unfortunately most of the computer hardware engineering jobs are really just computer maitenance. Fixing computers, setting up systems etc is where the mainstream computer hardware engineering jobs are. There are quite amazing jobs for computer engineering with hardware, but they are mostly with high tech research companies, being really competitive, or with something like the military.

Software needs to be tailored to each individual user/company in many scenarios, while hardware less so. If your really interested you're going to have to stick with things like the geek squad, and work hard through university to try to get into something awesome (but once you do, the jobs are pretty awesome)

[Tony]

mirhagk @ Wed Apr 25, 2012 9:30 pm wrote:

Unfortunately most of the computer hardware engineering jobs are really just computer maitenance.

That is just bluntly untrue.

GTA (Markham, to be more specific) is home to IBM, ATI, AMD ? all involved with computer hardware.

[mirhagk]

Well it's still true, regardless of how many different jobs there are that actually interesting for computer engineering, (and there are many), the number of computer tech shops which install anti-viruses for a living vastly outweighs the rest. Individual businesses sometimes have in-house software teams, their in-house computer engineering department usually consists of far less people because you don't have to build things from the ground up, you just have to install and maintain things.

Never said every job for computer engineering was just computer maintenance, just that a vast amount of them are, and they outweigh the non-maintenance ones in number.

[Tony]

well sure, but OP wasn't asking about those kind of jobs. Much the same way as someone with a Mechanical Engineering degree, capable of designing and building a brand new engine from the ground up, would not be looking at jobs for changing your car's oil. Yes, an Engineer would be capable of doing simple maintenance tasks. Yes, there are more of such low-skill jobs. No, they were not being asked about.

[mirhagk]

I was just saying that programming has more non-competitive jobs that are still skilled based, where hardware jobs that are skilled based are pretty competitive (there's big things like IBM and ATI and AMD, but there's not a lot of comfort jobs like there are like are with software.

[Tony]

I don't think those were being asked about either

[hamid14]

straight from a university website my brotha:

Computer Design Engineer
Computer Architect
Electronics Designer
Software Developer
Developer, Operating Systems and Networks

and i mean, seriously, there are a bunch of other careers too, probably.