Good Day James
Just as a thought, I have joined the industry 7yrs ago and would not want to go back somewhere else. As you have already mentioned, you looked at both, the equipment manufacturers and the aircraft manufacturers. I think here is exactly the big issue for us engineers in this business:
- You can either go to an equipment OEM and, if unlucky, keep looking at all your customers aircraft on the calendar at the wall and never see one real
or you can go to an aircraft OEM but then you will most likely "only" write technical requirements for the hardware others will develop and produce for you and you then will integrate it.
I came from the hardware side in the automotive industrie and would not miss going back there. Specifying and integrating hardware and system seems much more interesting to me than codeing software or develop circuits which never worked anyways
.
I am now working for a smaller GA manufacturer in Europe and take part in all engineering activities from drafting concepty and requirements up to testing and certification. See that you get a job where you also get to see an airplane once in a while and can get onto the right side front row for some real action
.
This may confuse more than it helps but you asked for some thoughts. And, once you joined the industrie, you will never want to go back..
Cheers, Daniel