Aerospace engineers

Ensure projects meet required standards and regulations

AI can continuously monitor project compliance against standards databases, flag deviations, track regulatory changes, and generate compliance reports, automating much of the verification work while humans handle interpretation of ambiguous requirements and stakeholder negotiations.

BLS evidence: Ensure that projects meet required standards.

Develop criteria for design, quality, completion, and sustainment after delivery

AI can draft design criteria, quality standards, and sustainment requirements by analyzing similar programs, regulatory frameworks, and technical specifications, producing comprehensive documentation that humans review and refine based on program-specific strategic considerations.

BLS evidence: Develop criteria for design, quality, completion, and sustainment after delivery.

Assess project proposals for technical and financial feasibility

AI can analyze technical specifications, estimate costs using historical data, model project timelines, and assess resource requirements with high accuracy, though human judgment remains important for evaluating strategic fit, stakeholder dynamics, and novel technical risks.

BLS evidence: Assess project proposals to determine whether they are technically and financially feasible.

Evaluate designs to ensure products meet engineering principles and customer requirements

AI can verify calculations, run simulations, check compliance against engineering standards, and flag potential issues in designs, significantly accelerating evaluation, though final judgment on novel design trade-offs and customer requirement interpretation still requires human oversight.

BLS evidence: Evaluate designs to ensure that products meet engineering principles, customer requirements, and environmental regulations.

Determine whether proposed projects will be safe and meet defined goals

AI can perform safety analysis, run failure mode simulations, check against regulatory requirements, and predict goal achievement using models, but determining safety acceptability for high-stakes aerospace systems requires human accountability and judgment on acceptable risk levels.

BLS evidence: Determine whether proposed projects will be safe and meet defined goals.

Design aircraft, spacecraft, satellites, and missiles

AI can generate design concepts and optimize parameters using generative design tools, but aerospace design requires deep integration of aerodynamics, structures, propulsion, and mission requirements with high-stakes safety implications that demand human engineering judgment and accountability for novel systems.

BLS evidence: Aerospace engineers design, develop, and test aircraft, spacecraft, satellites, and missiles.

Coordinate and direct the manufacture and testing of aerospace products

AI can assist with scheduling, resource allocation, and monitoring manufacturing metrics, but coordinating aerospace manufacturing requires on-site presence to resolve supplier issues, make real-time production decisions, and manage cross-functional teams dealing with complex physical assembly processes.

BLS evidence: Coordinate and direct the design, manufacture, and testing of aircraft and aerospace products.

Inspect malfunctioning or damaged products to identify problems and solutions

Physical inspection of damaged aerospace hardware requires on-site presence, specialized non-destructive testing equipment, tactile assessment of structural integrity, and diagnosis of complex failure modes in unique physical contexts that AI-enabled robotics cannot yet handle reliably.

BLS evidence: Inspect malfunctioning or damaged products to identify sources of problems and possible solutions.

Develop and test prototypes to ensure they function according to design

Prototype development and testing requires physical fabrication, instrumentation setup, test execution in specialized facilities (wind tunnels, vacuum chambers), and real-time troubleshooting of hardware failures—all requiring hands-on work in unpredictable physical environments that current robotics cannot handle.

BLS evidence: They create and test prototypes to make sure that they function according to design.