Is this an impossible aspiration for an Electrical/Controls Engineer?

Is there (or will there be) some specific fields or roles within electrical engineering that support the ability to work fully remote? To escape the 9-5, location dependant norm.

This could be as a employee, contractor or maybe self employed?




More info: my current background includes panel design, plc's, and some experience with instrumentation and  I'm looking for opportunities to steer my career towards remote work.

Dan,
I think it depends on what you mean by fully remote...

With your background, I'm sure there will be times when you need to get "hands-on" to troubleshoot or install systems that you've designed. So you would either need to have a fairly sophisticated test set-up at your home or you need to travel to employer/customer/client sites.

At one point in my career I did some work as a consultant for a company making industrial weighing equipment and was able to do quite a bit of troubleshooting over the phone but still had to travel to installation sites a few times. I also had to visit my customer occasionally (once or twice a year once things got going)

When the pandemic hit, I tried working from home in my current job but couldn't quite get around the need for "hands-on" troubleshooting when it came time to test.

If you have a Professional Engineer certification that would be very helpful and would likely be necessary if you intend to do consulting work in your area of expertise.

Hello Dan,
A very small list of jobs you can do at home. Or it takes a colossal amount of experience to tackle almost everything from a distance, without even looking at it. I doubt it will work that way, but then again it all depends on the clients and their orders. In theory, it is possible, in practice it is very doubtful.