I am thinking to do my Master's in System Engineering. What is the scope of System Engineering? There seems to be lots of jobs in aerospace and automotive company. What do you guys think?

I believe you should go for Embedded programming instead of system engineering

Why is that? Embedded programming jobs are outsourced in India and other countries from US. System Engineering could not be outsourced since it at the top of designing any system.

Designing of System is Design Engineering, not Systems. System Engineers own their system and are responsible for overall health of the system.

That is somewhat true. System engineers plans system and then organizes project. System engineer deals with the big picture of any plan.

system engineers goto the client sites, demonstrates the product and do the deployment.
They also work with sales team for pilots. They have to travel a lot. They got good scope.
They need to know lots of products including the product of the company he is working for.
It has a good scope. They don't do programming.

network administrators and system administrators own the system and are responsible for the health of the network.

its very rare that one would be hired directly into system engineering or sales engineering. Practically, i have observed that in lot of US companies, these people are internal transfers [ from various engineering branches ] or one from competitor [ seems more likely due to their contact and resources.]

about getting job.. it all depends on one's luck and where one applies. its rarely that one would get a job that one would like/want. its all about compromise. meaning that there is no pure design job... (o: one has to get requirement and do a feasibility study and so on. no pure hardware job... software has been integral portion... etc.. it depends how much you can take it and compromise... (o:

btw, there would be very little core engineering job left in US in the long run. but there would be a lot of field service, sales engineering [ aka system eng. as mentioned above], sales and marketing and finally managerial jobs in US.

if one is talking about jobs in aerospace and automotive then personally i would shy. one has seen decline in sales and profitability of all US based companies. [big three plus boeing ] boeing has been losing its battle with airbus. i do not think american deals and defense project alone is sufficient enough to bail them(gm/boeing/ford) out. in automotive, japanese companies has less than 35% of total sales produced inside US. [its hard to predict that there would be tremendous growth in that area].

it has always been telecommunication, vlsi [ milli, micro and now nano tech] that has been a key in defining turn around in engineering job market.

just my thouts...

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but as always
what do i know ?? (o:

Yah, people do not get hired for system engineering. And also in most of the universities, system engineering requires 3 yrs of industrial experience. I am just looking at this field to move on at my work. Thank you all for your suggestions.

I disagree w/ u thapap.

First off System Engineering position can have different meaning depending upon industries and companies. In power sector, a system engineer owns his system and takes care of it. In retail sector, they have to make sales pitch and stuff.

Telecommunication alone is not the defining turn in engr job market. First off we aren't only talking about Electrical Engr here. Even if we are Electronics, Energ sector, utilities and Power Systems and electrical engr in Aerospace have contributed equally, if not more.

Aerospace engineer don't only get job in aerospace projects. They have both mech and electrical education combined (mostly). Companies Boeing will keep bolstering their workforce, even though they have seen some decline in the past year. One of the major players in the defense sector in Aerospace, Lockheed Martin will keep on expanding.

But to close the conversation again...System Engineering needs to be defined properly before you declare how peeps are hired in that section. My friend was hired right out of college as Sys engr.

Stiffler you are correct about Aerospace company. There are all kinds of engineering department in Engineering. Boeing gave 15% off in it's 737 plane by reducing it's manufacturing cost. So boeing is selling more planes than Airbus right now. Lockheed Martin is a very stable company also. And these companies are leaning towards system thinking. In a big run system thinking reduces overhead cost.

lets c lockheed, northurgrupman, bsi all defense jobs. i am sure they have other jobs too. but i was mentioning all that regading sponsorship issue as well.

stiffler, 1 thing is for sure one need to define system. but either is narrower or broader term system means a whole entity and "in any company" [ a recent graduate; does not have a whole lot of expertise to design one. he may even be a Phd(no offense) he does not basically have a whole understanding. it takes time.]

when i said vlsi [ it does include all electrical eng. concentrations, may be power module, electronics etc.... ]. Yes, i do still believe that telecom will and has always been the major turn around so far for electrical eng. jobs.
lets see... 1989 rapid growth. -->> SS7 on ISDN
1999-2001 -->> 3G/CDMA implementation
long/short haul fiber line implementation
2001 recession -->> crash of telecom. [ of course we can contribute to a lot many things. but if u look at the job loss in telecom in 2001-2002 that is more than couple of millions alone. at least 40% of all jobs lost in at least US.]

I am sure there are other parts too that will play a significant role. but my limited knowledge restricts me.

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my half asleep comments
as always (o:
what do I know?