Why the Core of Engineering Lost Its Way: And How Automation, Robotics, and AI Are Bringing Us Back

The future of engineering, like the future of nearly every profession, is facing mass disruption. Automation is accelerating, robots are replacing tasks, and AI is rewriting the rules of productivity. I'm not going to sugarcoat this reality. There is no denying that many jobs will be affected. But the story doesn’t end in loss; it also begins with rediscovery. Instead of asking what’s being taken away, maybe the better question is: what are we getting back? The very technologies we feared might strip the soul from engineering are actually pushing us closer to its creative origins.

Let’s step back for a moment and look to the roots of engineering.

Before engineering became siloed into hyper-specialized disciplines, it was a far more fluid process. Early engineers were generalists, creative problem-solvers who lived at the intersection of science, art, and architecture (Petroski, 2010). They weren’t just builders—they were visionaries.

Take Villard de Honnecourt, a 13th-century French architect and draftsman. His sketchbook doesn’t just contain blueprints; it’s a window into a way of thinking that blended invention with aesthetics, curiosity with precision. He drew mechanical devices alongside cathedral designs, treating each with the same imaginative care (Encyclopædia Britannica, 2025).

This harmony between disciplines wasn’t the exception; it was the norm. During the Renaissance, the boundaries between art and science were not just blurred—they were nonexistent. Leonardo da Vinci stands as the ultimate symbol of this era: a master painter, an anatomical researcher, and an inventor whose notebooks reveal an insatiable curiosity and a belief that design could shape destiny. He didn’t compartmentalize knowledge—he connected it.

Even further back, look at the Pyramids of Giza, Roman aqueducts, or medieval cathedrals. These weren’t just functional structures; they were statements of cultural values, spiritual beliefs, and aesthetic beauty. Engineering was deeply human; it reflected our desire to build, dream, and inspire.

So, what happened?

Let’s simplify this with two key variables: demand and computing power.

In ancient and pre-industrial times, engineering was a rare and prestigious skill set. Demand was low, and computing power—if we can even call it that—was virtually nonexistent. Think sticks, beads, and ink-stained fingers doing the math.

That low demand, paired with limited computing, meant engineers had the time and freedom to think creatively. Their work served the powerful—kings, pharaohs, popes—and it was used to impress, to dominate, to last.  But over time, as demand for engineers grew and the tools of the trade became more advanced, creativity began to take a back seat. Efficiency, standardization, and productivity took over. The profession became more segmented, more industrialized, and, frankly, more constrained.

However, as history progressed, something shifted.

As the Industrial Revolution approached, the demand for engineering skyrocketed. It transitioned from serving the whims of nobles and emperors to empowering daily life, driving society forward, and fueling the rise of capitalism. But with that shift came a subtle, yet powerful pull—engineering began to move away from creativity and toward pure productivity.

From the early 1900s through the 1950s, and even into the early 2000s, engineering was constrained by the limits of computing power. Engineers weren’t free-thinking innovators as much as they were precision instruments; cogs in a much larger machine. The demand was enormous, but computational capacity was minimal.

And in that gap, creativity started to fade. That doesn’t mean creativity disappeared. Far from it. But it became something reserved for leadership or small, elite teams. The average engineer was stuck in the trenches, solving technical problems through brute force rather than innovation.

Take the Apollo program, for example, a phenomenal achievement driven by sheer willpower, manual engineering, and creative problem-solving. The onboard computer used physical binary code, wires woven into magnetic rings to represent 1s and 0s. That system powered a spacecraft to the moon, yet today’s smartphones are over 5,000 times more powerful. Due to these limitations, teams of highly trained engineers worked around the clock, performing manual calculations, modeling potential scenarios, and inspecting every inch of hardware. According to census data, it was a golden age of engineering jobs, characterized by a focus on repetition, precision, and maintenance.

This era of engineering was defined by high demand and low computing power.

As the need for engineering solutions surged, but technology lagged behind, a new culture emerged, one where humans became the machines. Creativity wasn’t lost entirely, but it was pushed to the margins. And that mindset—the prioritization of precision over imagination—deeply influenced how we educated and trained engineers for generations to come.

But now, everything is changing.

We’ve entered an era defined by supercomputers, artificial intelligence, robotics, big data, and soon, quantum computing. Tasks that once required hundreds of engineers and thousands of man-hours can now be done in seconds. The foundational skills that powered 20th-century engineering—manual calculation, technical inspection, and physical modeling—are being outperformed by machines (TalentLens, 2025).

Here’s the challenging question: now that technology is surpassing human capability in many areas, what does that really mean for the future of engineering & design?

Automation may be replacing jobs, but it’s also fueling a new chapter in engineering. Rather than preparing future engineers to be just another cog in the machine, we now need to prepare them to be innovators and creators, the ones in the driver’s seat. Empowered by automation and advanced technology, teams can now build, test, and refine designs more quickly, at lower costs, and with reduced risk.

Take the rocket industry, for example.
The rapid evolution of the private aerospace sector shows just how profound this shift is. More small companies are entering the space race, building orbital rockets at a pace and price that would’ve been unthinkable a decade ago. The phrase “it’s not rocket science” exists for a reason: launching a rocket requires a perfect balance of efficiency and power to reach speeds of over 25,000 mph, just enough to break free from Earth’s gravity. It's a precision-driven feat that even some nations have yet to master.

Yet today, what was once immensely costly, risky, and failure-prone is becoming far more accessible.

Rocket engines, the heart of any successful launch, are notoriously complex, requiring tight tolerances and extensive machining. But now, companies like Relativity Space are 3D printing entire rocket engines. This not only reduces manufacturing time but also allows for the creation of complex designs that were previously impossible to fabricate. It’s fast, affordable, and highly iterative. It shows that engineering is evolving back into a field driven by creativity, curiosity, and innovation. The cost of rapid prototyping and product development has dropped significantly, lowering both the financial risk and the barrier to entry. More individuals now have the tools to create, experiment, and build.

As machines take over the repetitive, mechanical tasks, we have to ask ourselves: What’s next for the future of engineering? And what skills will truly matter?

While hard skills remain the foundation of engineering, they’re increasingly being augmented by automation. What can’t be replaced are the uniquely human skills: creativity, emotional intelligence, critical thinking, and the ability to collaborate and communicate across disciplines (Castrillón, 2025).

Our educational and professional development systems are still largely built around an older model of engineering, one where mastering hard skills was the sole focus (Jamison & Mehta, 2009). That mindset needs to shift. The future requires a balance between hard and soft skills, empowering the next generation to be not just builders, but creators.

Core Soft Skills for the Age of Automation

Let’s face it, automation is reshaping the landscape of engineering. Hard skills like coding, modeling, and analysis still matter, but they’re no longer the whole story. As AI takes over repetitive tasks and accelerates data-driven decision-making, the value of uniquely human skills is skyrocketing. These are the skills that can’t be replicated by software: creativity, empathy, judgment, and the ability to connect across teams and disciplines.

The World Economic Forum (2025) projects that nearly 39% of all core skills will be disrupted by 2030, with a significant rise in demand for creative thinking, resilience, adaptability, and lifelong learning. These soft skills are no longer optional; they are strategic essentials. Analytical thinking remains at the top of the list of core skills, but resilience, leadership, and emotional intelligence are rapidly gaining importance, marking a clear shift from purely technical competence to human-centered capabilities (World Economic Forum, 2025).

We’re entering a new chapter, one fueled by massive computing power and relentless innovation. But instead of replacing engineers, this shift is challenging us to reimagine what engineering can be. It’s not just about solving equations faster; it’s about solving the right problems with vision, humanity, and impact.

Foundational Soft Skills Shaping the Future of Work in the Era of Automation and AI:

Strategic Thinking: When repetition is offloaded to machines, vision becomes your edge. Engineers need to move beyond execution and start thinking like systems-level strategists. It’s about understanding how a solution fits into the broader landscape—both economically and socially, as well as environmentally. Strategic thinking means seeing both the code and the context, anticipating outcomes, and building with long-term impact in mind (Castrillón, 2025).

Creative Problem-Solving: Automation excels at optimizing, but it takes human ingenuity to invent entirely new pathways. Creative problem-solving isn’t just about finding answers; it’s about asking better questions. Whether it’s eliminating process inefficiencies or inventing an entirely new product, this is the muscle behind innovation. Engineers must become idea generators—not just problem solvers (TalentLens, 2025).

Emotional Intelligence & Empathy: Behind every product is a person—and often, a team. Emotional intelligence is now a core component of engineering excellence. It’s about understanding team dynamics, reading the room, and designing with empathy. In fact, nearly 80% of professionals now rank emotional intelligence (EQ) above technical skills when it comes to effective collaboration (Everything DiSC, 2024). Innovation doesn’t thrive in silos—it’s built through connection.

Adaptability & Lifelong Learning: Gone are the days of learning one tool and calling it a career. Today’s engineers must be agile, curious, and relentlessly committed to growth. New technologies emerge daily. Staying relevant requires a mindset of continuous learning, experimentation, and reinvention (Do Better Team, 2025; Kumar, 2024). Adaptability isn’t just how you cope—it’s how you lead.

Ethical Judgment: AI can make decisions, but it can’t weigh consequences. Engineers now design systems that directly affect people’s privacy, labor, safety, and rights. That raises big questions: Who benefits? Who’s left out? Ethical decision-making requires engineers to be thoughtful stewards of their impact, able to identify risks, foresee unintended consequences, and speak up when something doesn’t sit right (TalentLens, 2025).

Leadership & Influence: Leadership isn’t reserved for the C-suite. Engineers are now expected to lead sprints, shape product roadmaps, and foster team alignment. Influence is about more than authority—it’s about trust, clarity, and the ability to align others around a shared goal. In an age of fast pivots, engineers who can lead are the ones who create lasting change (TalentLens, 2025).

Moving Forward:

Sometimes, in order to move forward, we need to look back. Throughout this exploration of engineering’s history, we’ve seen how different eras have been shaped by two key forces: demand and computational power. While this is a simplified lens on a complex evolution, it offers a useful framework for understanding how engineering has transformed and where it may be headed next.

In the early days, when both demand and computational power were low, engineers had the freedom to be visionaries, creators, inventors, and artists. They had the time and space to think deeply, to design, and to innovate. But as societal and industrial demands surged faster than computational support could keep up, engineering evolved. It became rigid and task-oriented. Engineers were increasingly positioned as cogs in larger machines, valued more for their technical precision than for their creativity. This mindset still lingers in many engineering education systems today, where we continue to prepare students to fuel a machine that is rapidly becoming automated. And that brings us to the present moment: a new inflection point where demand remains high, but computing power—for the first time—is beginning to outpace human capabilities.

The roles that once defined engineering during the Space Race—the meticulous calculations, the drafting, the testing—are now being automated by robots and AI. That’s not a future threat; it’s a current reality. These technologies are simply better suited for many repetitive, rule-based tasks.

But here’s the better question: Did we really want those jobs in the first place?
Most engineers don’t enter the field to perform repetitive, mechanical tasks. They enter to create, solve meaningful problems, and build the future. Automation may be eliminating routine work, but it’s also unlocking the possibility for engineers to return to those core motivations.

To seize that opportunity, we must shift our mindset. Competing head-to-head with machines in areas they already dominate is a losing battle. However, partnering with machines is where the potential lies. What once required hundreds of engineers can now be achieved by small, agile teams collaborating with AI and robotics. This is a return to engineering’s creative roots—an opportunity to re-center the human advantage: strategic thinking, creativity, emotional intelligence, and collaboration.

To support your exploration of this shift, I’ve compiled a resource section that examines the emerging skill sets engineers need in today’s hybrid world.