Today, Wednesday 4 November, is National Engineering Day, and this year is a special one: it marks the 50th anniversary of the Royal Academy of Engineering. To celebrate the milestone, this year’s theme is “Now Hiring: The Engineers of 2076”, which looks fifty years ahead rather than back.
As our industry embraces new technologies and responds to the challenges of a changing climate, we wanted to know what our engineers think the role will look like half a century from now. So, we asked members of the SRC team one question:
“It’s 2076 and you’re writing a job description. What’s the engineering role, and what will they be working on?”
Here’s what they had to say:
“We’re looking for a Symbiosis Engineer to rewild London, creating a city where people and nature thrive together. Your mission is to meet the demands of today’s and tomorrow’s climates and build a city that walks hand in hand with nature. For residents and visitors alike, London should be safe, clean, effortless and enjoyable to experience, with nature woven meaningfully into their everyday lives. You’ll blend living materials with nature-based design to deliver surface and subsurface heat dispersion and capture, drainage and sewage networks, flood defences, clean energy generation and storage, and carbon capture. You’ll create green corridors for wildlife and seamless, congestion-free transport that turns streets back into places for people and nature. AI will design solutions on demand and robotic teams will build them in real time, while you join the team that sets the direction: what the city needs, which trade-offs are acceptable and which safety lines can never be crossed.”
– Michael Hanson, Lead Project Engineer
“By 2076, the biggest engineering challenge will be keeping aging infrastructure running while we rebuild it for a changed climate and a fully electrified grid. As a project engineer, you’ll manage the delivery of projects like grid-scale storage, flood defences, and the retrofit of existing buildings and transport networks, coordinating contractors, tracking budgets and schedules, and making sure designs are actually buildable. You’ll work closely with AI-assisted design and monitoring tools, but you’ll still be the one making judgement calls on site, managing risk, and keeping stakeholders informed. If you like turning complex plans into things that work in the real world, we’d like to hear from you.”
– Geraldo Hasani, Project Engineer
“If I were writing a job advert in 2076, I’d be looking for an engineer who can blend technology with practical problem-solving. They’d be responsible for intelligent transport systems that can monitor, maintain and even repair themselves, helping people move around more efficiently and sustainably. Despite all the advances in AI and automation, the most important skill will still be engineering judgement. The challenges may change, but engineering will always be about improving people’s lives.”
– Zaid Mahmood, Project Engineer
From rewilding London to keeping our infrastructure running through a changing climate, our team’s visions of 2076 look very different from one another. But they share one thing: however much technology changes, engineering will always be about improving people’s lives. Happy National Engineering Day!