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Aerospace & space

Engineering

Designing and testing aircraft, rockets, satellites and spacecraft.

This suits you if…

You are patient enough to spend months on analysis and documentation between rare test campaigns, and you find aviation as genuinely interesting as space, because that is where the large majority of the work actually is.

Look elsewhere if…

Your passport won't clear the security requirements where you want to work. Check that before you choose a degree, not after: a great many aerospace and defence roles require citizenship or a clearance in the country of the work, and no amount of ability opens them.

What the work actually is

What the work is actually like

Simulation, analysis and documentation, in that proportion. You model a structure or a flow, run the case, argue about whether the model is trustworthy, and write it up so that a reviewer two levels above you can be convinced. Test campaigns are intense and rare; the months between them are calculation and paperwork, because in this industry the paperwork is what makes a thing allowed to fly.

The catch

It's the most security-restricted field on this list: a great many aerospace and defence jobs require citizenship or a security clearance in the country where the work is, which closes them to international students regardless of ability. Programmes also move slowly and are cancelled by politics, so you can spend years on something that never flies.

What people get wrong about it

That the industry is astronauts and launches. It's overwhelmingly analysis, certification and incremental improvement of aircraft and satellites. The large majority of aerospace employment is aviation, not space.

The jobs inside this area

  • Aerospace engineer
  • Avionics engineer
  • Propulsion engineer
  • Satellite / systems engineer
  • Flight-test engineer

A list, not a recommendation. You narrow it, we don’t.

What this kind of work usually offers

Making things · Helping peopleA generalisation about the sphere, not a promise about a salary. Pay and security vary enormously by country and employer.

How you get there

The one-line version

An aerospace or mechanical degree. Rocketry, CanSat and space-design challenges are the entry point.

Stage by stage

  1. While you are still at school

    Physics and maths at the highest level you can take. Model rocketry, CanSat and drone building are the real entry point, and they show up in applications precisely because they are hands-on.

  2. What you study

    Aerospace, or mechanical with an aerospace specialisation: aerodynamics, propulsion, structures, control and a lot of simulation. Check the citizenship rules of the countries you might work in BEFORE choosing where to study; it is the one constraint here that ability can't overcome.

  3. How the first years actually go

    A junior analyst or test engineer inside one narrow subsystem, working to a standard you didn't write. The field rewards patience: seniority here is measured in programmes seen through, and those take years each.

Where this work lives, and how you reach it

What you would study for it

Each says what the first year is really made of, and who should study something else instead.

16 countries · 28 cities · 46 institutions named for this field. Each one states its catch as well as its appeal.

  • Kazakhstan

    Named here: Nazarbayev University · Kazakh-British Technical University · Satbayev University

  • Germany

    Named here: Technical University of Munich · Technical University of Berlin · RWTH Aachen University

  • Poland

    Named here: Warsaw University of Technology · AGH University of Krakow

  • Italy

    Named here: Politecnico di Milano · Sapienza University of Rome

  • Switzerland

    Named here: ETH Zurich · EPFL

  • Netherlands

    Named here: Eindhoven University of Technology · Delft University of Technology

  • United Kingdom

    Named here: Imperial College London · University College London · University of Manchester · University of Cambridge

  • United Arab Emirates

    Named here: Khalifa University · New York University Abu Dhabi · Heriot-Watt University Dubai · University of Wollongong in Dubai · American University in Dubai · American University of Sharjah

  • Türkiye

    Named here: Boğaziçi University · Middle East Technical University · Istanbul Technical University · Bilkent University

  • South Korea

    Named here: Seoul National University · KAIST

  • Japan

    Named here: The University of Tokyo · Kyoto University · Osaka University

  • China

    Named here: Tsinghua University · Shanghai Jiao Tong University · Southern University of Science and Technology

  • Hong Kong

    Named here: The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology · City University of Hong Kong

  • Singapore

    Named here: National University of Singapore · Nanyang Technological University

  • United States

    Named here: Massachusetts Institute of Technology · Stanford University · University of California, Berkeley · University of Washington

  • Canada

    Named here: University of Waterloo · University of British Columbia

Without leaving home

1 of the routes that need no visa and no move lead into this field.

Test it this month

Free, and finishable in a few evenings

Fly a rocket you designed, or run a free flight simulator and try to fly a precise approach. Then read an official accident investigation report end to end. The way that document reasons from evidence to cause is exactly how this industry thinks.