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Are Sustainability Engineering Roles in Demand?

March 10, 2023

Iana Aranda, director of Engineering Global Development at ASME, discusses in-demand skills.

Is there a market pull for sustainable engineering roles?

“Absolutely,” confirmed Iana Aranda, director of Engineering Global Development at ASME, during her video interview with Machine Design.

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers hosted a stakeholder summit early in 2022 to explore this very question and to consider the intersections of sustainability in engineering.

“There are market forces that are already pushing this forward, namely environmental, social and governance, or ESG, factors that investors are considering,” said Aranda.

She added that these factors are creating a shift in culture, as well as “a pull for reporting, for understanding activities, particularly of corporations related to sustainability, which ultimately trickles down to the entire workforce and engineers.”

Given the engineers’ critical role in developing solutions, products and services associated with technological advancement and the bottom line for many of these corporations, a move in this direction demands attention.

The shift has also been observed in academia, where students—the incoming engineering workforce—are interested in having meaningful, purposeful work. “They want to do this as their paid job, which is entirely sensible,” Aranda said. “They want to be rewarded for their time and talent and then, of course, we’re also seeing this from the perspective of regulatory agencies.”

Aranda pointed out that the demand for sustainability in engineering solutions is further related to President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Deal and the measure of investment being made in climate action and technology associated with advancing climate action.

Bookmark this page for the latest series of WISE (Workers in Science & Engineering) webinars and to keep pace with an initiative that builds awareness about barriers facing equity-seeking groups in the engineering industry.

Rehana Begg | Editor-in-Chief, Machine Design

As Machine Design’s content lead, Rehana Begg is tasked with elevating the voice of the design and multi-disciplinary engineer in the face of digital transformation and engineering innovation. Begg has more than 24 years of editorial experience and has spent the past decade in the trenches of industrial manufacturing, focusing on new technologies, manufacturing innovation and business. Her B2B career has taken her from corporate boardrooms to plant floors and underground mining stopes, covering everything from automation & IIoT, robotics, mechanical design and additive manufacturing to plant operations, maintenance, reliability and continuous improvement. Begg holds an MBA, a Master of Journalism degree, and a BA (Hons.) in Political Science. She is committed to lifelong learning and feeds her passion for innovation in publishing, transparent science and clear communication by attending relevant conferences and seminars/workshops.

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