Is there a growing need for D.Eng SE?
Hey everyone, I am contemplating advancing my heavily mechanical technical career with a D.Eng in Systems Engineering. I have a BS in Civil Engineering and MS in Engineering Management but most of my professional time (7+ years) has been spent in mechanical technical operation roles across Nuclear Propulsion Plants and Data Centers. I also have 3-ish years of MEP Project Engineering and I've recently started to pivot to more of a commissioning role with some systems reliability while also pursuing Mechanical PE.
My main reason to pursue SE is to stay relevant in the increasingly digital and data-driven engineering landscape. Systems Engineering really interests me, but I’m struggling to evaluate the ROI of pursuing it for my industry in particular: critical facilities & engineering operations. While I am familiar with some systems principles in industry, I have mainly found formal Systems methodologies to be more prevalent in aerospace, defense and manufacturing settings.
There are a lot of high-paying roles with “Systems” in the title, but the terminology across engineering and tech feels extremely broad and sometimes inconsistent. I’m trying to figure out what paths are actually worth pursuing versus titles that just happen to include the word “systems.”
Bottomline, my primary interests are in operational analytics, critical infrastructure systems reliability, and lifecycle management. From my perspective, many of these areas seem naturally connected to Systems Engineering principles, even if the formal SE terminology aren't always used directly.
Does anyone have ideas about the relevance of SE in critical infrastructure operations such as data centers, pharma, or related operational environments? Or does anyone have insights if there is a growing need for critical operations to adopt SE methods over traditional facilities engineering and maintenance approaches?