Though the sectors in which you may end up working could vary quite significantly, your role as an electrical engineer may typically include the design of electrical products, circuits, systems and processes. You will normally need to work closely with your colleagues to make engineering projects come to life and will need to prepare detailed designs, drawings, specifications of electrical systems and offer technical advice. Your team may likely extend beyond colleagues to other engineering disciplines involved in multi-disciplinary projects, to contractors, suppliers and not least of all to your client. Building a positive, respectful relationship with your client is essential to ensuring effective project completion and sustainable opportunities going forward. Meeting standards and customer requirements and ensuring compliance with specifications and codes underpins the work that you do. As such you will participate in technical design reviews and work towards value engineering goals, thereby making sure your work meets performance standards, is of high quality, reliability and safety, while taking cost factors into account. Your technical report writing skills remain important throughout your career and similarly, you may be required to document and present very technical topics to different audiences. Your understanding of the need for detailed calculations and your proficiency therein, both from a first principles perspective and with the use of software, will stand you in good stead in your career.

As an electrical engineer your responsibility may include attending site meetings and doing site visits and your outcomes include assuring quality, conducting tests, recording data, proposing modifications and solving challenges. All engineers need to keep up to date in the evolving knowledge and new technologies available to their profession and so find new solutions to unique engineering problems. A fundamental understanding of project management principles and skills in project planning, stakeholder management, quality management, project risk identification and mitigation, procurement, budgeting and human resource management will take an electrical engineer to the next level of their career.

You will likely be based in a professional office environment though regular site visits to construction environments or to factories, plants and workshops will generally also form part of your work circumstances. This might be both urban and rural, depending on where your projects are based. Where you are required to visit sites, travel may be quite extensive and you may also find that you regularly travel across borders for work.

Working hours typically extend beyond normal hours, though weekend or shift work is not usually necessary.

Though you may probably need to work for an employer to gain the relevant experience at the start of your career, self-employment for qualified engineers who have established their reputation is also possible.

A typical day at the office will require a lot of communication, meetings, much autonomy to make decisions and will be fairly unstructured. The use of computers, software, hardware and technology is key to effectively functioning as an electrical engineer.

Power Distribution

• Biomedical
• ICT

Power Production

• Building Services
• Instrumentation

Power transmission

• Communications and signal processing
• Integrated Circuits

Product design

• Control systems
• Integrated nano-technolgy

Process design

• Digital systems
• Lighting

Renewable energy

• Electromagnetic fields
• Manufacturing and construction

Telecommunications

• Electrophysics
• Mechatronics and robotics

Transportation and transport networks

• Heating and ventilation
• Photonics

Electrical engineers may also specialize into one or more sub-disciplines or electrical engineering as follows:

• Electronic engineering
• Electrical Power engineering
• Alternative energy engineering
• Telecommunications engineering
• Computer and software engineering
• Microelectronics engineering

Your path to becoming an electrical engineer requires that you study and attain a BSc or BEng Electrical Engineering degree from a South African University. This will normally take you a minimum of four years, which means you will have achieved an Honours level qualification.

The Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA) maintains a list of accredited degrees and if your qualification is included on their list, you become eligible to apply to become professionally registered after achieving the relevant competence and experience levels as stipulated. Should your degree not be recognized by ECSA, your qualification will still be evaluated to determine equivalency to an accredited South African degree. Upon meeting ECSA’s academic requirements you will be eligible to become a Candidate Engineer, which is one of the first steps you should take after graduating to set your direction towards getting to professional registration and in that enriching your career options.

Besides for your engineering and scientific knowledge and technical prowess, an electrical engineer will need a key set of skills and attributes to create the conditions for building their career successfully.

Relationship management and communication skills in dealing with a broad range of people will underpin a sustainable career. Written communication skills are similarly important. An electrical engineer will have many times where they will be faced with pressure and time management is a necessary skill in this respect, as is resilience, adaptability and the ability to manage stress. Planning and organisational skills will further empower an electrical engineer to be effective, as will critical thinking, analysis and problem solving skills through which logic and reasoning ability can be applied to identify the pros and cons of solutions and alternative solutions to the problems being tackled. The application of sound judgement and decision making are likewise essential.

As you progress in your career, your ability to manage a project independently and coordinate the inputs from different team members and specialists with the aim of delivering a quality product within budget and time constraints, becomes imperative. Even now, remember relationship management.

Please also see the Discipline Specific Guidelines provided by ECSA for Electrical Engineers.

Mechanical

• IIE MSA
• University of Cape Town
• University of Johannesburg
• University of KwaZulu-Natal
• Nelson Mandela University
• North West University
• University of Pretoria
• Stellenbosch University
• University of the Witwatersrand

Electrical

• IIE MSA
• University of Cape Town
• University of Johannesburg
• University of KwaZulu-Natal
• Nelson Mandela University
• North West University
• University of Pretoria
• Stellenbosch University
• University of the Witwatersrand

Industrial

• University of Johannesburg
• Nelson Mandela University
• North West University
• University of Pretoria
• Stellenbosch University
• University of the Witwatersrand