WETFEET RESOURCES
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES
Aerospace & Defense
Industry Overview
Love-Hate
Major Players
Job Descriptions & Tips
Aerospace and Defense Job Listings
Industry Overview
Aerospace and defense manufacturers develop aircraft and spacecraft for the
commercial sector, and military aircraft, spacecraft, missiles, tanks, and
other products for the United States and other militaries. Nearly half of the
aerospace and defense industry’s revenue comes from the latter half of the
equation. Within the United States, there is only one major aircraft
manufacturer—Boeing. Its only domestic rival, McDonnell Douglass, was
swallowed up by the maker of 747s in 1997. However, buying McDonnell Douglass
didn’t take out the competition—Europe’s Airbus Industries has been steadily
gaining market share in recent years and now ranks as the number-one aircraft
manufacturer in the world.
Other companies manufacture aircraft parts—GE manufactures engines and
Raytheon makes radar systems—but nearly half of all aerospace dollars come
from the defense market (Hoover’s). Lockheed Martin derives about 80
percent of its revenue from defense contracts with the U.S. government.
Additionally, aerospace firms have large contracts with NASA. Lockheed and
Boeing have agreements with NASA that equal 3 to 4 percent of their annual
revenue—this includes the Space Shuttle, Satellite, Rocket, and other
programs.
If you’re looking at aerospace firms, you’ll definitely need to consider the
possibility of working on defense projects. Typically, aerospace projects
have a high technical complexity factor and low output—the processes aren’t
overly standardized and require a significant amount of engineering effort to
produce products. For engineers, this means that juicy problem-solving
activities abound not just in product development, but also in production.
Moreover, NASA and the defense department have more far-sighted designs than
the next quarter’s profits, which means that their projects are often for
cutting-edge technologies. The effect for people working in the industry is
that you get to work on things that are decades ahead of what the general
public will ever see. As an insider puts it, “defense is R&D for the rest
of the economy.”
Aerospace and Defense Job Listings
Aerospace/Defense
Avionics Engineer
Controls Engineer
Defense Design Engineer
Aerospace Design Engineer
Environmental Engineer
Manufacturing Engineer
Defense Market Analyst
Defense Software Engineer
Defense Technical Support Specialist
Aerospace Market Analyst
Aerospace Software Engineer
Aerospace Technical Support Specialist
|