Careers in Transportation Systems and Design

Transportation systems designers are a significant, emerging branch of the transportation design field who are going to play a leading role in ensuring that new, advanced transportation and mobility solutions are sustainable, popular with end-users and account for all other stakeholders.

We equip our students to envision integrated transportation systems, not just technologies that solve parts of the solutions. They should be working at the nexus of user-experience, design, business, technology and with insights into policy, global trends, environmental impact and future studies. To this end, the holistic approach of our program prepares our graduates for some really interesting, emerging career opportunities, which are very different from the regular, studio design positions that the typical undergraduate student is offered.

These emerging career positions will become more sought after and valued by a greater variety of transportation related enterprises and agencies. For example, positions that our graduated students have already landed include exciting positions within disruptive start-up companies seeking strategically thinking, highly fluid, creative, problem solving team-members; contributing to serious user-experience research and development within the advanced technology/design application groups within the automotive industry; similar situations with enterprises that are developing alternative modes of personal mobility; joining consulting companies that work with cities, governments and private sector enterprises that are seeking more creative and holistic answers to their advanced, alternative transit challenges; or major supply companies that are developing the technologies around autonomous mobility, for instance.

We also see such opportunities emerging within companies and organizations that are working in the aerospace, rail, logistics and transit segments of the transportation world. Increasingly, these different fields realize the need to employ designers that can help them develop new business models that might include collaborating across fields—another great opportunity for our holistically thinking, collaboratively-minded graduates to pursue.

Career and Professional Development

ArtCenter is dedicated to providing internship, recruitment and networking programs that help students and alumni navigate their creative careers and establish connections with our industry partners.