Hello quam47,
itīs a coincidence I am reading your post.
I am mechanical engineer and I work in a department which does a lot of tructure development (aerostructures) within an engineering supplier in Germany. Main customer is Airbus. We develop a lot of structural components (mostly CFRP) for Airbus directly or for system suppliers of Airbus.
As it sounds to me, this is exactly what you majored in at university.
Although you asked for a job description for an engineer within an airline, I could possibly still have two, three interesting words for you to say.
Just as in automotive industry, in aviation a lot of engineering work is outsourced to engineering suppliers. Common practice. This has nothing to do with manufacturing though, this is done by other suppliers. We have a lot of stress people and we work closely together (Design & Stress). So if you want to do FEM for aircraft structure, this would be a good way. It`s in Germany, not sure how visa requirements are. But just as in Germany, in any european country involved in Airbus there are always several engineering supplier companies right next door.
Following things besides engineering suppliers could be of interest:
- Lufthansa Technik (Lufthansa`s own maintenance, but also much more. e.g. they upgrade production airliners, VIP jets, also develop new materials and processes). It is based in Germany, quite large company. FEM is needed in so many areas.
- EADS generally, this includes Astrium, Eurocopter, Airbus. All renamed recently.
Still, even if you have not studied exactly what you originally aimed for, no reason to get discouraged. Degrees are only a first entry ticket, for many careers it`s not really too important which specialisation in mechanical engineering you have. Give it a try where you think you want to go, even if at afirst glance you think they might not need your skills. You never now. Often they don`t know either what exactly they need.
A master degree in my point of view would help dramatically to open up the field of options of later employment. You have set a very good basis with a bachelor degree. And with a master now or even later with some experience there should be some interesting options. But reducing the search to airlines only will decrease the number of options a lot in my point of view.
But I can understand if it`s the fact of being closer to the aircaft that`s in your mind. Just an assumption. This is a problem with engineering suppliers, in my experience they are too far away from the later product.