Have you ever wondered why certain materials are used to create stuff? Who decides that oil pipelines should be made of carbon steel, or that high-strength, low-alloy steel should be used for truck frames and rail cars?

Materials engineers are the people who create and innovate materials like metal and minerals to ensure that they’re of the highest-quality and are appropriate for the product they’re being used for. This basically means that materials engineers specialize in understanding specific types of materials like ceramic and plastics, and develop, process, and test them. This is essential to the process of selecting which materials to use in important products like aircraft wings, as well as everyday products like golf clubs, tennis rackets, and skis. The job market for metallurgical and materials engineers has seen growth in recent years due to trends in the primary metal manufacturing industry, and because everyone needs products made of all sorts of different kinds of materials.

According to Benjamin Hatton, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, the job market for materials engineers is an interesting one to be a part of because there isn’t just one sort of industry or company that would hire a materials engineer. “Where materials engineers end up can be in many different kinds of companies because every company, more or less, if they make something, needs somebody on their staff to be looking at the materials involved, or how to improve it or test it, for quality control or sustainability,” he says. “So a lot of companies and a lot of different industries will take materials engineers. I know people who have gone to all kinds of different industries that they didn’t necessarily start out aiming for.”

Glenn Hibbard, associate professor in UofT’s materials science and engineering department, agrees. He says that many students in the university’s program find work in a wide variety of industries: “aerospace companies like Bombardier and Pratt & Whitney; electronic materials manufacturers like Celestica; nanotechnology companies like Integran; mining companies like Barrick Gold; manufacturers like Magna or Texas Instruments; or, more traditionally, metallurgical companies like ArcelorMittal Dofasco.”

While in school, an apprenticeship or co-op program may be valuable for students thinking of becoming materials engineers. “I think that apprenticeships are excellent to get some sort of hands-on experience,” says Hatton. “I think you really learn a lot more about how a job really works and what kinds of things are important or interesting when you’re actually there.”

UofT offers their second- and third-year students a chance to participate in a Professional Experience Year (PEY), a paid internship program that spans 12–16 months (which gives students an average salary of $44,000). It gives students a great opportunity to “get practical experience during the course of their undergraduate degree,” says Hibbard.

Carol Brouillet, university relations advisor at metals and mining corporation Rio Tinto, says that when looking for a candidate for a materials engineering apprenticeship or internship, companies often look for students who “are serious about their studies. (so they should have a good GPA), are passionate about the industry, and ideally, speak another language,” which, she says, opens up more opportunities for people to find work in other countries.

Brouillet also says that along with preparing for a career in materials engineering through practical experience, students need to keep in mind that the demand for materials engineers often stems from remote locations. “I find that a lot of students who are studying materials engineering [after they graduate] want to work in big cities,” she says. “The crucial thing for them to know is that if they want to work in this industry, they will most likely need to work in a remote location.” This is the reason she says it’s important that students are passionate about what they do because they may be required to do it in a place that they wouldn’t ideally choose to go.

“I think it’s the most interesting [form of engineering] because it’s the foundation for everything else. It is actually a really cool discipline” says Hibbard. “Every other type of engineering depends on the materials available to them. It’s an enabling discipline. We [materials engineers] are kind of the ones who are behind the scenes and help the other disciplines do what they do.”

Discussion

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