Electronic engineering is an exciting and fast paced industry. As an electronics engineer you will design, develop and test components, devices, systems or equipment that use electricity as part of their source of power. These components include capacitors, diodes, resistors and transistors.

You may be involved at any stage of a project including the initial brief for a concept, the design and development stage, testing of prototypes and the final manufacture and implementation of a new product or system. You will work in project teams with colleagues in other branches of engineering. You can work in a variety of areas, as electronics are used in many things. These areas include:

• acoustics
• medical instruments
• mobile phones
• nanotechnology
• radio and satellite communication

You could specialise in a particular subfield of electronic engineering, such as:

• control engineering
• instrumentation
• signal processing
• telecommunications engineering

Particular ethical debates related to electronics engineering include the environmental impacts of deployed technologies, and the role of the profession in weapons production and other military applications.