Marine Engineer Information
The Marine Corps offers dozens of job options to new recruits. Engineers, who are more formally known as combat engineers, support units in the ground department for the Marine Corps. A combat engineer is essentially a "Jack of all trades" in the Marine Corps. You need to be ready for anything, since you never know what you'll experience in the field in this job.
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Training
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Marine combat engineers go through recruit training, or boot camp, to learn basic military skills. They then go through the Basic Combat Engineer Course at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, where they learn skills more closely related to their specific engineering job, such as demolition in urban areas and architectural drawing preparation. During this time, Marines also continue with physical conditioning.
Specialties
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Within the field of combat engineering, there are more specific jobs available to Marines, based on tasks performed in the field. These include engineering equipment operators--who use machinery for earth-moving, logging, grading, excavating and other operations-- and engineer assistants, who support field engineers through design, planning, cost management and other administrative tasks. You can also work as a general combat engineer, whose tasks include mine clearing, maintenance, demolition and building construction.
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Engineer Platoon Tasks
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As a Marine combat engineer, you'll often work in a Marine expeditionary unit as part of a combat engineer platoon. You job in this situation is to work as part of a team with other engineers to build bunkers, maneuver the unit through obstacles and perform other civil engineering tasks.
Benefits
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Along with your salary, joining the Marine Corps as an engineer offers other benefits. You'll receive free comprehensive medical and dental insurance for you and your family, free on-base housing or a monthly housing allowance to live off base, tuition assistance if you want to go back to school for an advanced degree, 30 days of paid vacation a year, an opportunity to travel the world and access to a number of social networks while you're a Marine and after you retire.
Rank
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If you enlist in the Marine Corps as an engineer, you'll start as a private. Through experience and by proving yourself in the field, you can be promoted through the ranks to private first class, lance corporal, corporal, sergeant, staff sergeant, gunnery sergeant, master sergeant, first sergeant, master gunnery sergeant and sergeant major. At the rank of corporal, you're eligible to attend officer training programs to become a commissioned officer in the field of engineering.
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References
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