Exploring professional roles for early career engineers: a systematic literature review

Abstract

It is recognised that engineers end up in a wide variety of engineering positions and that the importance of professional competencies might vary accordingly. However, most studies regarding professional competencies, employability or career guidance fail to address this variety in professional roles. This systematic literature review aims to identify professional roles for early career engineers and explores the defining attributes. Twenty-four publications were selected for inclusion by screening and appraising results obtained from three databases. Three frameworks that fulfilled the analysing criteria described similar roles focusing on innovation, optimisation and customisation. The majority of studies investigated professional competencies as identifying attributes, but inconsistency in and a lack of definitions hindered to determine the distinct professional competencies per role. Further research is recommended to identify role attributes and to investigate how a professional roles framework can support career development in engineering education, more particular in creating professional and self-awareness.