What can you do with a computer engineering degree?
Where computer engineering graduates actually work, and how exposed those jobs are to AI. Built from ACS 2020-2024 5-year PUMS: 23,484 people whose bachelor's degree is in this field, aged 22-64.
Computer engineering is a degree that mostly leads to software work. About 35 in 100 people with a computer engineering bachelor's degree work as software developers, by far the largest group. Next come computer and information systems managers at about 3 in 100 and computer systems analysts at about 2 in 100. Management analysts, architectural and engineering managers, project management specialists and electrical and electronics engineers each employ roughly 1 to 2 in 100.
The neighboring degree electrical engineering shares many of these jobs.
The largest groups we cannot score are managers in other roles at about 4. 5 in 100, other engineers at about 3 in 100, other computer occupations, computer programmers and computer support specialists at about 2 in 100 each, and computer hardware engineers and chief executives at about 1. 6 in 100 each. We have no page yet for hardware engineers or programmers.
This page covers about 63% of computer engineering graduates, and the figures come from Census data on more than 23,000 people with the degree.
How exposed are computer engineering jobs to AI?
Computer engineering graduates are concentrated in one job we rate At risk: software developers, about 35 in 100, which scores 17 out of 100 on structural exposure with Medium confidence. Across the scored jobs, 83% of graduates work in At risk jobs, 10% in AI-resistant jobs and 7% in Safe ones.
The label rests on task exposure and the absence of a license wall around software work, and the field evidence is mixed: the studies disagree about what has happened to graduates so far, and computer and information systems managers carry only Low confidence. Our confidence is medium. At risk describes how exposed the jobs are, not a measured outcome for graduates.
These figures cover the 63% of computer engineering graduates who work in occupations we score. The other 37% work in roles we do not cover (largest: Other Managers; Other Engineers; Computer Occupations, all Other). Signal 01 averages each job's own structural exposure, weighted by how many graduates work there; it describes tasks, not whether jobs will disappear.
Where computer engineering graduates actually work
These 10 occupations account for 56% of computer engineering graduates. The rest are spread across many smaller occupations, each under 1%. Graduates often work outside the field.
Careers next door to computer engineering, least exposed first
Curated related careers of the main occupations above, ranked by structural exposure (lowest first), so you can see which neighboring routes are less and more exposed.
What the research says about AI and computer engineering graduates
Computer engineering is named directly in several of the studies. The Census Bureau working paper (September 2026) places it in the top exposure decile of its Table A3 ranking, second only to computer science on its main GPT-4 exposure score, with 2024 employment and earnings coefficients of -0. 068 and -0. 120, centered at zero. Those results are close to computer science's -0. 061 and -0. 190: slightly weaker on employment and milder on earnings.
The Dallas Fed lists computer engineering among the most exposed majors. Employ America (July 2025) found higher unemployment for it than before the pandemic, but said this was not widely true of other high-exposure majors. NBER Working Paper 35796 finds no rise in summer 2026 recent-graduate unemployment relative to older graduates and young workers without degrees. The studies disagree about how much of the weakness is due to AI, so the evidence is contested.
Read the full evidence review: what the studies say about AI and graduate jobs →
Degrees whose graduates work in similar jobs
How this page was built
Graduate shares come from the Census Bureau's American Community Survey (ACS 2020-2024 5-year PUMS), field of degree "Computer Engineering" (code 2407), weighted to the population. Each occupation we cover is scored with the numbers already published on its own page on this site, then averaged by graduate share. Occupations without a page are shown but never scored. Graduates aged 22-64 are included, so the mix reflects the whole working-age group, not only recent graduates. The survey records the most recent occupation of people who were not working when surveyed (unemployed or out of the labor force), and they are counted in it: across the degrees on this site that is about 9 in 100 graduates, between 6 and 13 in 100 depending on the degree, so "work as" on this page means "work or last worked as". Sources: www2.census.gov, www.bls.gov, www2.census.gov, www.dallasfed.org, www.nber.org, employamerica.org. This page is general information, not career or educational advice.