Government

The FDA and its various departments, the U.S. Public Health Service, the Veterans Health Administration, and the Department of Agriculture all have positions relevant to an engineer interested in combining the field of pharmaceuticals with a career in public service.

Engineers working at the FDA review, evaluate, and report on data as part of the FDA process to determine the safety and efficacy of medical products. They evaluate not only the test results being reported by the petitioning company, but they examine the test methods and manufacturing plans as well. They may work in various departments such as the Office of Science and Engineering Laboratories or the Center for Devices and Radiological Health, to name a few.

At the Department of Heath and Human Services, engineers are on staff to advise on the planning, design, acquisition, and construction of research, research support, and administrative facilities used by the department and its divisions, such as the National Institutes of Health.

Engineers at the Veterans Affairs and Health Administration serve in many capacities. Manufacturing and process engineers might be involved in facility design, advising on redesigning, implementing, and maintaining the complex and critical medical equipment intended to serve ever-changing patient and medical priorities. Or they might be biomedical engineers charged with finding solutions to problems associated with the lower limb kinematics and musculoskeletal forces during human locomotion.

So a full spectrum of engineering careers can be found in public service. The best place to start looking if you think this is the path you want to follow would be USAJobs, the governments' centralized job search and career website. It is maintained by the Office of Personnel Management and simplifies the process of finding a federal job by posting job listings from all federal units in one location.