When I was a junior engineer, I thought my career path was clear: specialize deeply in power grid design, climb the ladder, and become the expert everyone goes to.
The idea made sense. It was safe, predictable, and followed the path laid out by just about every company in whatever industry you can think of.
But within a few years, that neatly laid-out vision lost its appeal. While I respected the senior engineers around me, I didn’t envy their day-to-day. Their careers were impressive, but limited. Hyper-specialized, often isolated from broader strategic conversations, and typically stuck dealing with technical details and problems.
I realized early that I didn’t want to be “The Engineer” known for fixing technical problems, or doing drawings or calculations. Having to use a standard to validate a design causes me anxiety. The thought that the rest of my life would unfold like this, drawings, specs, calculations - I felt like I was like one of those magicians, that get locked in a safe, dropped to the bottom of the ocean, and expected to get out. And I didn't have a key.
Instead, I was fascinated by the bigger picture: leading projects, coordinating teams, solving complex human challenges, and seeing my work make a tangible impact beyond the technical solutions I was supposed to like delivering.
If you’re an early-to-mid-career engineer feeling the pressure of a choice between specializing technically on the one hand, or stepping into project leadership, you’re not alone. And this dichotomy—between technical depth and leadership—is one of the most critical crossroads you'll face in your career.
Here's why it matters, how to make the best choice for you, and what you can do to start steering your career intentionally right now.
Why Choosing Your Career Path Early is Crucial (and Difficult)
Traditional engineering career paths often assume that you’ll naturally deepen your technical expertise. And why the hell wouldn't it?
Engineering education and corporate culture value technical skill. Promotions and recognition in most organizations are often based on your specialized knowledge and individual contributions.
But here’s the catch: becoming a project leader isn't simply an evolution of your engineering job.
It’s fundamentally different work.
Leadership requires skills you likely haven’t been taught yet—effective communication, empathy, negotiation, and the ability to handle messy, unpredictable human interactions.
Companies have typically treated project management as something engineers earn through endurance. You're supposed to “wait your turn,” gaining 25 years of experience before stepping into management. But in reality, leadership isn’t just a reward for years of service. It’s a distinct skill set—one that you can and should start building early, if this is the path you wish to choose.
This mismatch—between the expectation to specialize and the desire to lead—can create significant career frustration if your goal is to step into Project Leadership.
Early-career engineers often feel stuck, seeing clearly where they want to go, but not knowing how to get there without grinding through years of unrewarding technical specialization.
Technical Specialist vs. Project Leader: Two Distinct Paths
The Technical Specialist Path:
- Pros: Clear progression, respect for expertise, predictable work patterns, intellectually satisfying for detail-oriented minds.
- Cons: Narrow career options, can become silo-ed, limited strategic influence, potential monotony over time.
The Project Leader Path:
- Pros: Broader influence, higher visibility, more variety in tasks, growth opportunities in management and leadership, significant organizational impact.
- Cons: Less predictable, initially unclear progression, more relational complexity, requires developing non-technical skills rapidly.
Both paths have immense value—but they appeal to fundamentally different goals and strengths, and fundamentally different people.
Choosing between them isn’t just about where you want to work, but how you want to work.
To be perfectly clear: there is absolutely nothing wrong with specializing technically, if that's your thing. In fact, I have mad respect for anyone who can (and even enjoys to) put their head down for weeks or months, to grind out a technical design with calculations, specifications and drawings based on a wide variety of standards.
This was my personal nightmare, the kind you don't feel you'll wake up from—if it resonates even a little with you, let’s talk about exactly what skills you need to step confidently toward leadership.
Making the Shift: Three Skills You Need to go from Engineer into Project Leader
Moving from engineering to leadership is completely achievable, but there are three critical skills you must intentionally develop—none of which are usually taught to engineers:
Competencies Section (small clarity tweak):
1. Communication: Speak Human, Not Engineer
Your number-one skill as a project leader isn't to become better technically—it's to communicate clearly with non-engineers.
Your stakeholders don’t award brownie points for complexity. They want clarity: simple, straightforward information they can act on. Your job is to translate complexity into simplicity.
2. Emotional Intelligence: People Are Messy—Get Used to It
Leadership shifts your focus from clean engineering equations to messy human interactions. You’ll navigate stress, motivation, egos, confidence, and trust—daily.
The sooner you embrace that this emotional landscape is now your core work, the faster you’ll grow into effective leadership.
3. Decision-Making Under Uncertainty: Get Comfortable in the Gray
Engineers typically seek clear, correct solutions. Leaders rarely have that luxury. You’ll constantly need to make quick decisions with incomplete data, under pressure.
Accepting uncertainty as normal—and thriving in it—is the hallmark of successful project leaders. You will live in the gray areas; that’s your new normal.
Actionable Steps: How to Start Your Leadership Journey
If you’re like me, and you've realized that technical specialization isn’t your endgame, here’s how you can start preparing for a leadership path right now:
- Clarify Your Motivation: Get clear about why leadership matters to you. Is it influence? Variety? Strategic input? Career acceleration? Understanding your reasons will help you communicate clearly and persuasively about why you’re ready to move beyond traditional engineering roles.
- Seek Stretch Assignments: Volunteer for small leadership roles or interdisciplinary tasks at work. If your current position doesn’t offer enough opportunities, look externally: join industry associations, participate in committees, volunteer as a project manager (e.g. with Project Managers without borders) or lead community projects. Practice makes progress.
- Develop Communication Habits: Start communicating more intentionally—share brief updates in meetings, volunteer for presentations, or create simple one-pagers summarizing key project decisions for stakeholders. Build a habit of translating technical knowledge into clear, simple language.
- Study People, Not Just Technology: Read widely about emotional intelligence, leadership styles, and conflict management. The best leaders learn from diverse sources—business, psychology, even history. Practice applying these insights to your interactions at work. Best thing you can do today, is to go to 16personalities.com, take the test, figure out who you are, and then read about all other personality types. Go through life and try to figure out the people around you, colleagues, friends, family..., and adjust your behaviour with them in line with what you think they need from you, so you get what you need from them - and see what happens.
A New Path: Why Project Leadership is for You—Right Now
As an engineer who took this step, I can assure you: leadership is a 100% learnable skill, and the rewards—career acceleration, organizational impact, personal fulfillment—are well worth the effort.
You don’t have to spend 25 years waiting your turn. The next generation of project leaders is stepping up right now, equipped with the essential skills that engineering programs and corporate training often overlook.
Don’t wait for someone's permission—start today. Small actions build big leadership careers. Baby-steps, getting 1% better every day, will give you the confidence, and career you truly want, without waiting for someone else to "grant it".
Your weekly actionable Tip:
Start Leading Small
Pick one small opportunity at work this week to practice leadership:
- Suggest a clearer meeting structure/agenda.
- Propose a solution to a recurring team conflict.
- Briefly summarize and circulate project priorities to your colleagues.
Leadership is not granted; it's developed by repeated small actions that build trust and visibility over time.
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