[ “X” Engineer ]

I was asked yesterday, ‘what is a risk engineer’?  Twenty years ago, I was asking of my colleagues, ‘what’s a pipeline engineer?’ (And then I wrote an article about that, and ten years later we had a 240-strong competency framework for pipeline engineers.  But I digress).

What is a “insert any modifier” engineer? Civil, mechanical, process, software, the list of modifiers goes on.

The modifier indicates a specialty field, to differentiate the conduit versus codes versus rotating machinery expertise.  The modifier changes, but the noun doesn’t: {modifier} engineer. 

The commonality being engineer, who inevitably is a multi-dimensional, technically-thinking, collaborative problem-solver.