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Technicians and associate professionals · code 3151

Ships' engineers

Sensors can monitor the engine room. Fixing the main engine in a heavy sea is still an engineer's job.

AI barely touches four of the five tasks, all about running, maintaining and fixing engines and machinery. Ordering fuel and stores and keeping records is mostly out of its reach too.

What they actually do (and what else they get called)

Ships’ engineers control and participate in the operation, maintenance and repair of mechanical, electrical and electronic equipment and machinery on board ship, or perform related supporting functions on shore. Tasks include - (a) controlling and participating in the operation, maintenance and repair of mechanical, electrical and electronic equipment and machinery on board ship; (b) ordering fuel and other engine-room department stores and maintaining records of operations; (c) performing technical supervision of the installation, maintenance and repair of ships’ machinery and equipment to ensure compliance with specifications and regulations; (d) inspecting and conducting maintenance and emergency repairs to engines, machinery and auxiliary equipment; (e) standing engine room watch, monitoring and noting performance of engines, machinery and auxiliary equipment. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Ships’ engineer Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Marine engineer - 2144

  • fisheries refrigeration engineer
  • ship assistant engineer
  • ship duty engineer
  • marine chief engineer

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

77 / 100

Mostly holds up against AI

AI can take a few chores off your plate, but most of the day is still yours.

Not the odds you keep your job. It's how much of the everyday work still needs a person, out of 100.

← Robot's turf Human's turf →

The ILO's official verdict: Not Exposed

180 of 427 for holding up against AI

Why this score?

The ILO rated each of this job's 5 tasks for how much of it AI could do. They average 23.1 out of 100, so it holds up at 100 − 23.1 = 76.9.

That's the whole sum. No black box, no secret sauce: you can check it against the ILO's study. ILO group “Not Exposed”: None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count.

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Pinch of salt: this number is probably too rosy

It only asks what AI software could do, and this job is 68 out of 100 hands-on. A chatbot can't do that part. A robot might, one day, and nobody measures how close that is.

Man v Bot · compare

Who holds up better?

Ships' engineers 77

v

Go on, try your partner's job. Or your sibling's. We won't tell.

Man v Bot

Where the bot helps, and where the human wins

Bot

What AI takes

The routine stuff. You may not miss it.

  • Stores ordering and engine-room records.
  • Remote engine monitoring.
  • Maintenance planning software.

Man

What people still do better

Judgement, trust and skilled hands. Hard to download.

  • Emergency repairs at sea.
  • Maintaining engines and machinery.
  • Standing watch and judging problems.

Both

What's arriving

New work that only exists because the AI does.

  • Alternative fuels such as LNG, methanol and ammonia.
  • Hybrid and electric propulsion.
  • Remote support from shore engineers.

Written by a human, from the ILO's task ratings below. Yes, we see the irony. Read it as one person's take.

Meet your two rivals

They're not the same machine. AI software can only reach the parts of a job done on a screen or in words. A chatbot can't climb a ladder. A robot might, one day, if it doesn't fall off.

The AI

Lives in a screen. Never had to fix a boiler.

Threat level: Low

26 could do without you

It could take over very little of the work on its own. It could help with 63 of 100.

The robot

The wildcard. Has hands, still working out stairs.

How much it matters here: Higher

68 how hands-on

Most of this job needs hands, a body or turning up. That's robot territory, and nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to give you a number. We won't make one up.

So could a robot do the physical part?

More fine handwork, and more time in cramped or awkward spots, than a typical hands-on job. That is exactly what machines find hardest: they do best in tidy, predictable places.

Robots hate fiddly work in awkward spaces. On that measure, this job scores 42 out of 100. The higher it is, the longer the robot waits.

68 How
hands-on
42 How fiddly
and cramped

Kind of hands-on work Hands-on, fiddly work in tight spaces

The small print

They aren't a robot score, and nothing on this page is. Nobody measures how far robots have got well enough to put a number on it. These are the closest thing we have: how hands-on the job is, and how much fiddly, cramped work it takes, which is what Frey and Osborne found hardest for machines.

From O*NET, averaged across 3 US jobs .

finger skill 39.3 · hand skill 38 · cramped spaces 48.2 · averaged · rule: hands-on 50+ · fiddly 39.4+

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.8-observed-use measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

The job, task by task

Every job is really a bundle of tasks. Here's this one unpacked, with how much of each AI could do, out of 100. The score is the average, and averages can hide a lot.

AI's favourite task here scores 31, against an average of 23. The bigger the gap, the more lopsided the job: some of it wide open to AI, some of it barely touched.

  1. 31

    Ordering fuel and other engine-room department stores and maintaining record of operations

    Low
  2. 24

    Performing technical supervision of the installation, maintenance and repair of ship’s machinery and equipment to ensure compliance with specifications and regulations

    Very Low
  3. 23

    Standing engine room watch, monitoring and noting performance of engines, machinery and auxiliary equipment.

    Very Low
  4. 20

    Controlling and participating in the operation, maintenance and repair of mechanical, electrical and electronic equipment and machinery on board ship

    Very Low
  5. 17

    Inspecting and conducting maintenance and emergency repairs to engines, machinery and auxiliary equipment

    Very Low

5 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.8-observed-use

Sidekick or replacement?

A tool that makes you faster is a very different thing from one that does the task while you watch. Jobs and Skills Australia measured the two separately, which is handy.

AI helps you
63
AI does it for you
26

Sidekick wins, by 37 points.

How good a match is this?

One Australian job matches this one closely, so this is about as reliable as it gets here.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.8-observed-use matched to Australian jobs 2312

Meanwhile, in real life…

Everything else here is about what AI could do. This is what people actually did. When they asked Claude for help with this kind of work, did they hand the whole task over, or roll their sleeves up and work through it together?

Tiny sample alert This job makes up 0.03% of all the conversations: a tiny slice, mostly the paperwork rather than the work. People using AI for a job isn't the same as AI being able to do it.

Out of every 100 conversations

37
63

worked through it together handed it over

The small print

Anthropic publishes this about its own product, and it doesn't feed into any score here. These are people who use Claude, not workers in general, so little use here doesn't mean AI can't reach the job.

The data is sorted by US job, and this one matches 2 of them. We've combined them, counting each by how often it comes up in the conversations, so the busiest one counts most.

These two add up to 100. The bars elsewhere on the page don't, because each is scored on its own, so we don't put them side by side.

observed use Anthropic Economic Index release 2026-06-26, period beginning 2026-05-01 data 0.8-observed-use 2026-05-01 · Anthropic, about its own product

So, should ships' engineers be worried?

Short answer: not much. Some of the chores will change, and good riddance.

No. Ordering stores and keeping records is the most exposed task, rated Low; supervising, maintaining and repairing machinery rate Very Low. Ships are adding remote monitoring and automation, but engineers still keep them running at sea.

Worth remembering: we score tasks, not jobs. When AI takes on a task, the job usually reshuffles around it rather than vanishing.

Where this job could lead

None of the new jobs we've written up start from here yet. Could be you're the first. See the jobs AI is creating →

How are the neighbours doing?

There are 82 jobs in the “Technicians and associate professionals” family, averaging 65. This one is above the family average.

Pit this against any other job →