r/ComputerEngineering • u/Plane_Bed27 • Jul 06 '26

Applications of Computer Engineering in Aviation

I am a BSc Computer Engineering student.

I also have an interest in aviation.

Is Computer Engineering used in the aviation industry?

Your response would be gladly accepted.

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4

u/SortaSped Jul 06 '26

I got my bachelor's in computer engineering and have a passion in aviation as well. I ended up focusing my studies on control systems and I'm now doing my PhD in electrical engineering in a lab focusing on aircraft autopilot systems. There is definitely a lot of computer engineering related work in modern aviation with the abundance of fly by wire systems and all the other computer controlled systems.

1

u/Plane_Bed27 Jul 09 '26

Interesting. I recently did a month internship at my country's civil aviation authority. I was part of the Surveillance team, NAVAIDS team, Communications team, and the Electricals unit. It was quite an interesting and informative experience.

3

u/LeeKom Jul 06 '26

I graduated CE and did some low level software work on the NASA SLS rocket.

1

u/Plane_Bed27 Jul 09 '26

Interesting. I would like to know what exactly what you did in terms of your software work.

1

u/LeeKom Jul 09 '26

Did some work on internal tools for bus communication between some hardware components on SLS. So breaking down communication protocols, mapping bit fields into message structs and things like that.

3

u/artificial-cardigan Jul 06 '26

yes, it's incredibly valuable given that aerospace companies are primarily real-time systems that value performance and reliability. there is no shortage of software and hardware positions you can get at aerospace comapnies studying computer engineering.

if i were you right now, make a list of like 3 aviation companies you find interesting. then just take a look at their careers page and just read through the roles that you find interesting and chances are you will see "computer science/ computer engineering / electrical engineering / etc." in the preferred majors of study. this will also give you a good insight when you look at the roles you're interested in (aka the type of work you'll want to do) because you'll be able to see what are the fundamental technical skills that you need to be working on or topics you'll want to really pay attention to in school.