What It Takes to Be an Adaptable Engineer

The AI boom has disrupted how engineers work, introducing new tools to learn, raising expectations for what teams can achieve in a workday, and making it harder to get hired, according to IEEE Spectrum. The uncertainty makes it difficult to advise students on which specific coding languages or technical skills to learn, pushing advice toward a common refrain: be adaptable.

Samantha Brunhaver, an associate professor of engineering at Arizona State University in Tempe, says engineers often operate on the cutting edge, so dealing with change is a normal part of the job, yet university curricula and workplace training often do not prepare students for it. She received a National Science Foundation award in 2020 to study how to foster greater workplace adaptability among young engineers, interviewing engineering managers, early career employees, and undergraduates. She defines adaptability as the ability to recognize that a change or uncertainty is occurring and then respond effectively. The skill is context-dependent: in software engineering it may mean responding to turnover in daily tools, while aerospace or biomedical engineers may track changing procedures and regulations. She says managers all call adaptability important but define it differently.

A June 2026 PwC report found jobs in technology, media, and telecom are experiencing the fastest pace of skill turnover. The World Economic Forum's most recent Future of Jobs Report, published in 2025, found employers across all sectors expect 39 percent of workers' core skills to change by 2030.

Jenna Butler, a Microsoft research scientist studying developer well-being and productivity, describes a "chaos period" during paradigm shifts and says software engineers now face a significant increase in code review. She encourages leadership to set aside intentional time for continuous learning, even an hour a week, without expecting code output, warning that developers given little guidance while pressured to increase productivity risk doubling down on known tools and burning out.

Andy Hunt, coauthor of The Pragmatic Programmer, says the fundamental job is problem solving and communication, and emphasizes systems thinking over particular tools. He acknowledges hiring processes that filter résumés by language or years of experience make a more expansive relationship with the job harder. This article appears in the September 2026 print issue as "The Adaptable Engineer."