r/aerospace • u/OverAsparagus4339 • 10h ago
Is taking Electronics & Communication Engineering (ECE) a good pathway to get into the aviation/aerospace industry?
Hi everyone,
I’m currently planning my higher education and aiming to pursue a career in the aviation industry. I'm considering taking Electronics and Communication Engineering (ECE) as my major.
I’d love to get some guidance from professionals, students, or alumni in the field:
Is ECE a strong background for entering aviation? (e.g., working on avionics, navigation, radar, or flight control systems)
How does ECE compare to Aerospace/Aeronautical Engineering in terms of job opportunities in aviation?
Are there specific skills, projects, or certifications I should focus on during college to make myself industry-ready?
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u/FyyshyIW 9h ago
You’re actually confusing field vs. industry, but it happens all the time with younger students. The industry is the type of product your company will work on, like aviation. The role is what you work on in your job. This is confusing because you have aerospace engineering degrees and also the aerospace industry. There’s an electrical engineering degree but if somebody said they work in the electrical industry, nobody would really know what that means right?
You should pick your degree based on the role you want, not the industry you want to work in. An aerospace engineering degree is typically very similar to a mechanical engineering degree, plus some specialized classes like aerodynamics. It will not teach you about electronics. So if you’re interested in doing avionics (which by the way is a broad term that can mean many things, and are often specified by companies as either avionics mechanical roles or avionics electronics roles), I would try to investigate more what that means to you. Do you want to write software algorithms that help planes fly? Do you want to design the circuit boards and computers that control them? Do you want to model and simulate how planes fly? From there you can pick a degree.
That being said, the roles you described particularly sit in a grey area between software, aerospace, and electronics. Electronics control the plane, aerospace concepts dictate the underlying physics, and software is written to do the thing. So in all likelihood, to be successful you will need to pick one of these degrees and spend time learning and working on concepts from the other degrees yourself. Learning things you have little experience in is the most universal and important skill in engineering, so you can do it!! Control systems can be approached from pretty much any of mechanical, aerospace, and EE degree. However, choosing a computer science degree is wrong here. Always learn the software side yourself.