TORQUE
The career intel mechanical engineers actually need.
Salary teardowns. Real interview loops. CAD-to-corner-office paths. Built for MEs who want numbers, not platitudes.
What MEs Actually Earn
Band-by-band breakdowns at Lockheed, Raytheon, and tier-1 suppliers.
Senior Design Engineer @ Pratt & Whitney: $112K–$134K + 8% bonus
Aerospace vs. Automotive: where the $40K gap comes from
Why ASME certification moves you $15K in defense, nothing in consumer
Inside the Loop
The exact questions Lockheed's systems team asks. The rubric SpaceX uses for FEA candidates.
5-round loop breakdown: what each stage is actually filtering for
The one thermal analysis question Boeing asks every candidate
How to answer "walk me through a tolerance stack-up" without freezing
CAD Wars, Settled
CATIA vs SolidWorks vs NX — not features, but which one gets you hired where.
Defense primes hire 3× more CATIA profiles than SolidWorks at senior level
ANSYS Mechanical vs. Abaqus: the $30K specialization gap in FEA
Free tools that read as real skills on a resume (and which are noise)
Senior → EM → What?
The branching paths nobody draws in university. The ones that compound.
The IC track that outearns EM by year 12 in aerospace
When to stay technical and when the title change is worth the politics
PE license: which industries treat it as a gate vs. a nice-to-have
Is the ROI Real?
The pass rate is 54%. The salary bump varies by state and sector. Here's the full math.
States where PE is worth $22K more over 5 years (and where it's worth nothing)
Exam prep that worked: 11 MEs, their study hours, their first-attempt results
The technician-to-PE path: one route that took 6 years and actually worked
Career intel mechanical engineers actually need. Launching 2026.