Engineering, much like science, is a broad discipline which is often broken down into several sub disciplines. These disciplines concern themselves with differing areas of engineering work and to some extent can be outlined as follows, howevever this classification is broad at best. Although initially an engineer will be trained in a specific discipline, throughout an engineers career the engineer may become multi disciplined, having worked in several of the outlined areas.
Aerospace Engineering, The design of aircraft, spacecraft and related topics.
Biomedical Engineering, The application of engineering principles and techniques to the medical field.
Chemical Engineering, The conversion of raw materials into usable commodities.
Civil Engineering, The design and construction of public and private works, such as bridges and buildings.
Computer Engineering, The entire process of designing and coding computers and computer related devices.
Electrical Engineering, The design of electrical systems, such as transformers, as well as electronic goods.
Environmental Engineering, Environmental Engineers are concerned with protecting the environment by assessing the impact a project has on the air, water, soil and noise levels in its vicinity.
Instrumentation engineering, The design of all electronic instruments.
Mechanical engineering, The design of physical or mechanical systems, such as engines, kinematic chains and vibration isolation equipment.
Manufacturing engineering, The ability to plan the practices of manufacturing, to research and develop the tool, processes, machines and equipment, and to integrate the facilities and systems for producing quality products with optimal expenditure.
Industrial Engineering, To design systems or make systems more productive and efficient. There are roughly four main areas of industrial engineering, namely
Human Factors, Operations Research, Manufacturing, and Statistics and Quality
Mining Engineering, The extraction of raw materials from the earth, including ores, natural gases and crude oils.
Production Engineering, The design of packaging systems and use of raw materials.
Software Engineering, The design and development of software for use in digital systems
For each of these fields there exists considerable overlap, especially in the areas of the application of sciences to their disciplines such as physics, chemistry and mathematics.