Electrical Engineer

14.10 Electrical, Electronics, and Communications Engineering · SOC 17-2071

Electrical engineers design, develop and test electrical and electronic systems — power generation and distribution, control systems, communications, embedded computing, instrumentation and the electronics inside almost everything else. In Florida the work concentrates in aerospace and space launch, defence and simulation, utilities and grid modernisation, semiconductors and medical devices.

Licensure and accreditation

Most electrical engineers work without a licence, and in electronics, embedded systems and semiconductors a PE is uncommon. ⚠ But you cannot offer engineering services to the public, seal drawings or take responsible charge without one — which is why it matters most in POWER, utilities, building systems and consulting. THE DEGREE YOU CHOOSE CHANGES THE TIMELINE: under s. 471.013(1)(a), Florida Statutes, a graduate of an approved ENGINEERING curriculum needs FOUR years of active engineering experience; a graduate of an approved ENGINEERING TECHNOLOGY curriculum needs SIX. The route is an ABET-accredited degree, the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam — sittable in your final year — certification as an Engineer Intern, the experience, then the Principles and Practice of Engineering (PE) exam. Governed by Chapter 471, F.S. and Chapter 61G15, F.A.C. ⚠ Even if you do not expect to need a licence, SIT THE FE IN YOUR FINAL YEAR: it is cheap, you will never know the material better, and it keeps the option open.

What the work actually is

Electrical engineering splits into families that share a foundation and then diverge hard. O*NET’s task statements for the occupation describe designing and maintaining electrical equipment and systems, overseeing project timelines and budgets, directing manufacturing and installation, performing calculations to manufacturing standards, operating engineering software, testing vendors’ products, inspecting installations for compliance, and preparing technical drawings and documentation.

In practice you will end up in one of these, and the choice is usually made by which courses you enjoyed:

Power and energy — generation, transmission, distribution, grid modernisation, renewables. ⚠ This is where the PE licence genuinely matters, and where Florida’s utilities hire.
Electronics and circuits — analogue and digital design, semiconductors, instrumentation.
Embedded and computer engineering — microprocessors, FPGAs, firmware. Overlaps heavily with computer engineering.
Signals, communications and control — wireless, radar, signal processing, control systems. Strong demand from Florida’s defence and simulation sector.
Electromagnetics and photonics — antennas, RF, optics.

Projected need

O*NET, drawing on federal projections, reports 192,000 electrical engineers employed (2024), growth projected “much faster than average” (7% or higher) through 2034, and about 11,700 openings a year. Median pay is $120,630 a year ($58.00 an hour), 2025 figures — among the higher medians in engineering. 82% of survey respondents reported a bachelor’s degree as the requirement for new hires, a notably firmer figure than for mechanical engineering.

⚠ Those are national numbers. Florida’s demand is concentrated: space launch and aerospace on the Space Coast, defence and simulation around Orlando, utilities and grid work statewide, semiconductors, and medical devices.

Necessary skills

Mathematics you can use, not just pass. Differential equations and linear algebra are not background here — circuits, signals and control are written in them. Complex numbers become routine arithmetic.
Comfort with abstraction. ⚠ This is the honest difference from mechanical engineering: you cannot see a field, a phasor or a transfer function. Students who need to picture the mechanism sometimes find the transition to signals and electromagnetics hard, and it is worth knowing that before year three.
Laboratory and instrumentation skill — oscilloscope, function generator, spectrum analyser — and the habit of measuring rather than assuming.
Programming. Nearly every branch now needs C for embedded work and Python or MATLAB for analysis.
Debugging temperament. A great deal of the job is finding why a circuit that should work does not.

⚠⚠ Electrical engineering, computer engineering, or engineering technology?

Three nearby degrees, and the differences are consequential:

Degree	Centre of gravity	PE experience required
Electrical Engineering (CIP 14.10)	the full breadth: power, electronics, signals, fields	4 years
Computer Engineering (CIP 14.09)	digital systems, architecture, embedded; less power and fields	4 years
Electrical/Electronics Engineering Technology (CIP 15.03)	applied and hands-on; installation, test, maintenance	⚠ 6 years

⚠ The technology route also uses its own mathematics sequence, which frequently does not satisfy the calculus requirement for an engineering degree — so transferring into engineering later can mean repeating mathematics on top of the extra two years. All three are real careers; only the first two are engineering for licensure purposes.

Advice

Check ABET accreditation and the commission at amspub.abet.org before you enrol. An Engineering accreditation is what gives the four-year route.
Treat Physics II as a major course. Electricity and magnetism is the direct foundation of circuits, electronics and electromagnetics — more so here than in any other engineering discipline. Do not treat it as a general-education box.
Get to a circuits course early and see whether you like it. It is the cheapest honest test of whether this discipline suits you.
Build something outside coursework. A microcontroller project, a robot, amateur radio, a competition team. Employers ask, and it is the most common differentiator between graduates with identical transcripts.
Sit the FE in your final year even if you expect to go into electronics. Options are cheap to keep and expensive to recreate.
If you are starting at a state college, follow the published engineering transfer track and confirm the receiving university’s exact course numbers in writing — engineering has little elective slack, so a mis-substituted course costs a term.

Programs that lead here

A program is a field of study, one level above a degree — each page says which degrees it covers and which Florida institutions award them. ⚠ The count is institutions that awarded a credential in the field in 2023; it is not a promise that a school runs this exact degree, and it counts something different from the course-based list further down.

Electrical Engineering 10 Florida schools

The degree itself, and it is offered at ten Florida public institutions — the widest footprint of any engineering programme here after mechanical, so this is rarely a relocation decision. ⚠ For PE licensure it must be accredited by ABET’s ENGINEERING commission.

Engineering Technology 76 Florida schools

Careers similar to this one

Careers filed under the same broad field in the federal classification (ENGINEERING) — often they share early coursework, and each row says which group it is filed in. ⚠ Worth reading BEFORE you commit: switching between neighbours is cheap early and expensive late.

Aerospace Engineer Aerospace, Aeronautical, and Astronautical/Space Engineering

Aerospace engineers design, analyse and test aircraft and spacecraft — aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, flight dynamics and the mission design that ties them together. ⚠ Florida is one of the few places in the world where the whole industry is present at once: launch, satellites, aviation, simulation and defence, concentrated on the Space Coast and around Orlando.

Biomedical Engineer Biomedical/Medical Engineering

Biomedical engineers apply engineering to medicine — instrumentation and imaging, biomaterials and implants, biomechanics, and the tissue and neural engineering at the research frontier. It is the fastest-growing and newest engineering discipline in Florida. ⚠⚠ It is also the one where the bachelor’s degree is least often the end of the story: only 43% of employers treat it as sufficient, and two Florida universities award the degree at graduate level ONLY. Read the projected-need section before you commit — the arithmetic is not on any programme page.

Chemical Engineer Chemical Engineering

Chemical engineers design and run the processes that turn raw materials into products at scale — reactors, separations, heat and mass transfer, and the control and safety systems around them. It is the engineering discipline built on chemistry, and the only one that requires organic chemistry. ⚠⚠ In Florida it is taught at just FOUR institutions in THREE cities, and neither UCF nor FIU awards the degree — which makes where you start your degree the most consequential decision on this page.

Civil Engineer Civil Engineering

Civil engineers design, build and maintain the built environment — bridges, buildings, roads, water and wastewater systems, ports, drainage and coastal works. ⚠ It is the engineering discipline where a Professional Engineer licence matters most: much of the work legally requires one, because civil engineers sign off on things that fail publicly.

Computer Hardware Engineer Computer Engineering

Computer hardware engineers design and test the physical machine — processors, boards, memory systems, embedded controllers and the peripherals around them. ⚠ It pays better than any other career on this site and it is small: about 76,800 people nationally, and a third of the occupation expects a master's degree.

Environmental Engineer Environmental/Environmental Health Engineering

Environmental engineers design the systems that keep water, air and land usable — drinking water and wastewater treatment, stormwater, air-pollution control, landfills and the clean-up of contaminated sites. ⚠ It is the engineering discipline most bound up with regulation: the calculation decides what is possible and the permit decides what is allowed.

Industrial Engineer Industrial Engineering

Industrial engineers design the systems that produce things — people, machines, materials, information and money working together. They lay out factories, set quality standards, schedule production, measure and improve work, and cut cost and waste out of processes. ⚠ It is the engineering discipline that most often leads into operations management, and the one least confined to manufacturing.

Materials Engineer Materials Engineering

Materials engineers work out why materials behave as they do and choose or design them to meet a requirement — metals, ceramics, polymers, composites and semiconductors — and they are who finds out why something broke. ⚠ It is the smallest engineering occupation on this site, and in Florida it is mostly a graduate degree.

Mechanical Engineer Mechanical Engineering

Mechanical engineers design, analyse and test things that move, carry load, or move heat and fluid — engines, machines, HVAC and energy systems, vehicles, robots, medical devices, manufacturing plant. It is the broadest of the engineering disciplines, and in Florida it feeds aerospace on the Space Coast, defence, marine, power generation, theme-park ride engineering and a large and growing manufacturing sector.

See every career in ENGINEERING →

Courses along this path

Selected, not exhaustive — the courses specific to this path plus the foundations it is built on. A course number does not identify a course in Florida: always check your own institution's catalog and take a syllabus to an adviser.

MAC2311 —Calculus I Guide

Calculus I — the gate on the whole degree.

⚠ ⚠ Transfer is guaranteed only on the COMPLETED calculus sequence, because institutions order topics differently. Finish the sequence at one institution where you can.

MAC2312 —Calculus with Analytic Geometry II Guide

Calculus II — integration technique and series, both used constantly in signals and circuits analysis.

MAC2313 —Calculus with Analytic Geometry III Guide

Calculus III — vector calculus, which is the mathematics electromagnetics is written in.

MAP2302 —Differential Equations Guide

Differential Equations — the behaviour of circuits and control systems over time. Arguably the single most used mathematics course in the major.

PHY2048 —General Physics with Calculus I Guide

Physics with Calculus I — mechanics; the groundwork, and a prerequisite for the second course that matters far more here.

PHY2049 —General Physics with Calculus II Guide

Physics with Calculus II — electricity and magnetism. ⚠ For this discipline it is not a general-education requirement but the direct foundation of circuits, electronics and fields. Treat it as a major course.

⚠ Two equivalent packagings: a lecture with PHY2049L, or the integrated PHY2049C. Enrol in both halves where your institution splits them.

CHM2045 —General Chemistry I Guide

General Chemistry I — required by most ABET electrical programmes, and the basis for semiconductor and materials work.

⚠ ⚠⚠ FLORIDA NUMBERS GENERAL CHEMISTRY TWO WAYS, AND NO INSTITUTION CARRIES BOTH. Twenty public institutions use CHM2045 (or the integrated CHM2045C); nineteen use CHM1045 (or CHM1045C) — among them Florida State, Florida A&M, FIU, FGCU, Broward, Miami Dade, Valencia, Daytona State, Eastern Florida State, Gulf Coast, Indian River State, Northwest Florida State, Palm Beach State, Pensacola State, Polk State, St. Johns River State, Tallahassee State, North Florida and Florida Keys. Same course, same lower-division level, and the credit articulates either way — but ⚠⚠ LOOK UP WHICH FAMILY YOUR INSTITUTION USES BEFORE YOU GO SEARCHING, because the other number simply does not exist there. ⚠ Also check the packaging: the bare number is a 3-credit lecture needing a separate CHM2045L (or CHM1045L) laboratory, while the C form is the integrated lecture-plus-lab at 4 credits and is one registration.

EEL3111 —Circuit Analysis I Guide

Circuits I — the first true electrical engineering course: nodal and mesh analysis, transients, AC steady state. The course that tells you whether this discipline suits you.

EEL3112 —Circuit Analysis II Guide

Circuits II — frequency response, resonance, transformers, two-port networks and the transition to phasor and Laplace methods.

EEL3701 —Introduction to Digital Systems Guide

Digital Logic and Computer Systems — Boolean algebra, combinational and sequential design, state machines. The entry point to everything digital.

EEL3135 —Signals and Systems Guide

Discrete-Time Signals and Systems — sampling, convolution, the z-transform and the DFT; the foundation of all modern signal processing.

EEL3472 —Fundamentals of Electromagnetic Fields Guide

Electromagnetic Fields — Maxwell's equations applied to transmission lines, waves and radiation. The most mathematically demanding course in the degree for most students.

EEL3211 —Basic Electric Energy Engineering Guide

Basic Electric Energy Engineering — three-phase power, transformers and machines; the power-systems foundation and where the PE licence leads.

EEL4657 —Linear Control Systems Guide

Linear Control Systems — feedback, stability and compensator design. Where differential equations and signals analysis pay off together.

EEL4744 —Microprocessor Principles and Applications Guide

Microprocessor Applications — embedded programming and interfacing; the most directly employable single course in the degree for many graduates.

EEL4712 —Digital Design Guide

Digital Design — HDL-based design and FPGA implementation, the modern practice of digital hardware.

EEL4713 —Computer Architecture Guide

Digital Computer Architecture — pipelines, memory hierarchy and instruction sets; the bridge to computer engineering.

EGN3420 —Engineering Analysis Guide

Engineering Analysis — numerical methods and linear algebra, which underpin simulation and signal processing alike.

EGN3613 —Principles of Engineering Economy Guide

Engineering Economic Analysis — the economic justification of engineering decisions, and an FE exam topic.

Where you can take these courses in Florida

39 Florida public institutions teach courses on this path. The count is how many of the 19 listed courses each one carries — it shows where the path is best covered. It is not a statement that a school offers this as a degree; for that, check the institution’s own programme list.

UWF

University of West Florida

17 of 19

UNF

University of North Florida

13 of 19

FAMU

Florida A & M University

12 of 19

FLPOLY

Florida Polytechnic University

12 of 19

FSU

Florida State University

10 of 19

University of Florida

10 of 19

USF

University of South Florida

10 of 19

FIU

Florida International University

9 of 19

FAU

Florida Atlantic University

8 of 19

UCF

University of Central Florida

8 of 19

FSWSC

Florida Southwestern State College

7 of 19

Hillsborough College

7 of 19

SFC

Santa FE College

7 of 19

SPC

St. Petersburg College

7 of 19

SCFMS

State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota

7 of 19

Broward College

6 of 19

EFSC

Eastern Florida State College

6 of 19

FGCU

Florida Gulf Coast University

6 of 19

GCSC

Gulf Coast State College

6 of 19

IRSC

Indian River State College

6 of 19

MDC

Miami Dade College

6 of 19

NFC

North Florida College

6 of 19

PBSC

Palm Beach State College

6 of 19

PESC

Pensacola State College

6 of 19

SJRSC

St. Johns River State College

6 of 19

TSC

Tallahassee State College

6 of 19

College of Central Florida

5 of 19

FGC

Florida Gateway College

5 of 19

PHSC

Pasco-Hernando State College

5 of 19

SSCF

Seminole State College of Florida

5 of 19

SFSC

South Florida State College

5 of 19

FSCJ

Florida State College at Jacksonville

4 of 19

LSSC

Lake-Sumter State College

4 of 19

NWFSC

Northwest Florida State College

4 of 19

PSC

Polk State College

4 of 19

Valencia College

4 of 19

NCF

New College of Florida

3 of 19

CFK

The College of the Florida Keys

3 of 19

DSC

Daytona State College

2 of 19

Sources

Requirements change. These are the authorities that decide them — check them directly before committing to a route.

Florida Board of Professional Engineers — Licensure — The licensing authority: the route from degree to PE, and Engineer Intern certification.
Chapter 471, Florida Statutes — Engineering — s. 471.013(1)(a) sets the four-year and six-year experience requirements.
ABET — Accredited Program Search — Check the programme and its accrediting commission before enrolling.
NCEES — Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam — Specifications, registration and the reference handbook. There is an Electrical and Computer discipline version.
O*NET — Electrical Engineers (17-2071.00) — Tasks, skills, wages and the employment projections quoted on this page.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Electrical and Electronics Engineers — Federal wage, employment and outlook detail for SOC 17-2071.
IEEE — The professional society: standards, student membership and the technical societies worth joining early.
NCES — Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP 2020) — The federal taxonomy this path is filed under, at 14.10 Electrical, Electronics and Communications Engineering.

Last updated 23 September 2026.