its very rare that one would be hired directly into system engineering or sales engineering. Practically, i have observed that in lot of US companies, these people are internal transfers [ from various engineering branches ] or one from competitor [ seems more likely due to their contact and resources.] about getting job.. it all depends on one's luck and where one applies. its rarely that one would get a job that one would like/want. its all about compromise. meaning that there is no pure design job... (o: one has to get requirement and do a feasibility study and so on. no pure hardware job... software has been integral portion... etc.. it depends how much you can take it and compromise... (o: btw, there would be very little core engineering job left in US in the long run. but there would be a lot of field service, sales engineering [ aka system eng. as mentioned above], sales and marketing and finally managerial jobs in US. if one is talking about jobs in aerospace and automotive then personally i would shy. one has seen decline in sales and profitability of all US based companies. [big three plus boeing ] boeing has been losing its battle with airbus. i do not think american deals and defense project alone is sufficient enough to bail them(gm/boeing/ford) out. in automotive, japanese companies has less than 35% of total sales produced inside US. [its hard to predict that there would be tremendous growth in that area]. it has always been telecommunication, vlsi [ milli, micro and now nano tech] that has been a key in defining turn around in engineering job market. just my thouts... ===================================================== but as always what do i know ?? (o: