What are the careers associated with biomedical engineering?
Arriving straight at an internship or a new job immediately after obtaining your degree is a great achievement, and working with a biomedical engineering background can be very fulfilling. At the moment, the majority of the job opportunities are in medical devices, pharmaceuticals, and publicly-funded research as others have described. I personally work in pharmaceuticals, more specifically pharmacology or drug development. It is very practical to find how you fit into the current job landscape with your degree, but I recommend that you keep in mind what the future prospects for our degree will be. With the end in mind, you can focus your learning and networking for the key job opportunity that will most define your career identity and financial security. From experiencing the many projects working with Big Pharma and seeing the trends in new job postings, biomedical engineers will need to play an increasingly critical role in personalized medicine. This is a vague, umbrella term for devices, drugs, health insights, etc. that are tailored to an individuals or a specific populations genomics, lifestyle, physiology, medical history, etc. Biomedical engineers are well positioned to translate these features and user requirements into products or services based on our expertise in biology, medicine, mathematics, and engineering principles. However, traditional programs in universities or MOOCs are not teaching enough practical skills in statistics, computer science, and data science (data mining, machine learning, data engineering, data analysis). Putting all these skills and backgrounds together, a biomedical engineer could be the important technical lead or contributor to a personalized digital health algorithm, pharmacogenomic dosing protocol, or clinical laboratory instrument. Because so much data is being generated by medical imaging, cheaper genomics, high throughput proteomics, wearable sensors, etc., it would be beneficial to have some personal learning and stay on top of biomedical data science.