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I really want to work in the aviation industry. Is there any way I can put my computer science degree to use in this industry.

usernumber
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Tom
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    Avionics? Can you provide more detail on your aspirations? – Simon Sep 03 '15 at 09:00
  • Don't forget ATC hardware and software. – mins Sep 03 '15 at 10:14
  • Possible duplicate of http://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/1839/which-companies-develop-software-for-airplane-systems?rq=1 – usernumber Sep 03 '15 at 10:14
  • Computer science covers a lot of different things. What are we talking about here? Algorithmics? Networks? HCI? Database management? Cybersecurity? – usernumber Sep 03 '15 at 10:22
  • Me too! But 15 years in the software industry and I'd love to work in Aviation. – Jamiec Sep 03 '15 at 10:52
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because careers advice is too specific to the individual asking for that advice to be of general interest. – David Richerby Sep 03 '15 at 12:15
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    This would really be a better topic for chat than the site... – voretaq7 Sep 03 '15 at 16:11
  • If you want to work on something that's actually on-board the airplane, I'd recommend getting as much embedded development experience as you can. – reirab Sep 03 '15 at 19:02
  • reirab is right. For that you want 2 languages, Assembly and C. Every processor has it's own version of assembly these days, but they are mostly very similar. I'm told most of them run compiled C too. Assembly is the starting point but a lot of CS folks these days have trouble with it because it's so low-level, just one step above machine code. I don't know your situation so I'll just leave it at that. – DrZ214 Jan 26 '16 at 05:04

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I'm not sure if this question comes within the scope of this site the way it is phrased.

Anyway, Aviation industry is highly interdisciplinary and has a lot of scope for computer science engineers like,

  • Design of aircraft subsystems
  • Development of programs for design and analysis of aircraft components (CAD, CFD etc).
  • Instrumentation and testing of aircraft systems
  • Development of aircraft control systems (e.g fly by wire)
  • Aircraft testing and telemetry.
  • Aircraft maintenance, which is becoming software intensive.
  • Software for Airborne (avionics) and Ground based systems (e.g. Air traffic Management).
  • Development of aircraft display systems.
  • Software for communication systems for UAVs.

This list is by no means exhaustive. In most parts of aviation, there is a requirement for computer science engineers.

aeroalias
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  • Not to mention the admin side of things, even if you're not directly working on the software that makes the aircraft fly. Revenue Integrity, route planning etc - airlines churn through a huge amount of data. I was amazed when I worked in Airline Revenue Integrity just how much data they crunch daily, even at smaller airlines. – Jon Story Sep 03 '15 at 10:23