Engineers Week: A Q&A with an early-career engineer

After graduating in 2021 from Northern Arizona University with a degree in mechanical engineering, Matt Steiner, a Transportation Engineering Specialist at ADOT, quickly found out that he was in the wrong field.

“I wasn't happy with the work,” he said.

So, when attending a job fair in Flagstaff in 2023, Steiner learned about ADOT's Engineer in Training (EIT) program and immediately signed up. He joined ADOT as an EIT in January 2023 and calls it the best professional decision he’s made. Joining ADOT's EIT program has worked out well for many engineers that came before Painter, including ADOT Director Jennifer Toth, who started at the agency as an EIT.

We sat down to talk with Steiner about his experiences working as an engineer at ADOT in the early stages of his career and the EIT program.

Question: What did you like most about the EIT program?

Answer: I think it's a great way to start a career in civil engineering since you're given a large sample of overall tasks an engineer is expected to perform.

I think the people here at ADOT are really helpful and caring and they genuinely want you to learn. I actually really enjoyed the way that you would change jobs every few months. It was very dynamic.

It gives you this opportunity to find out what you actually like. So, on paper something might sound amazing, but you actually get to go in there and find out what they do day-in and day-out and you get to just decide for yourself whether that's something you like.

Q: What are some of the benefits of the EIT program?

A: You get time to study for the Fundamentals of Engineer exam. It's a requirement in order to complete the EIT program. So, they give you time to study for that but they'll also purchase study materials for you. Those can be upwards of a couple thousand dollars.

Q: Why did you choose to work at ADOT?

A: Before coming to ADOT, I was working in the mechanical engineering field and I wasn't happy. I wasn't happy with the work. I went out to a career fair in Flagstaff and I found the ADOT EIT program. They accepted me and I haven't regretted it once. 

Q: What kind of work do you do currently with ADOT? 

A: I'm with roadway design. I have only been here for a couple of weeks in my full-time position, but I guess in general, roadway design is about making and editing roadway plans based on your analysis of what's currently out there on the road and what you want to improve.

Q: How did the EIT program prepare you for your work here?

I get to work with a lot of knowledgeable people, so you're working side by side with professional engineers, and you're sort of getting a mentor-level guidance on a variety of things in civil engineering as you move through these different fields. It's really good preparation for full-time work at ADOT. 

Another big one for me, is that I've gained this working knowledge of how these interdepartmental rules come together to form the bigger picture and complete projects. It's something that I think not a lot of people get the opportunity to see first-hand.

They'd have to apply for these jobs, move into them, work them and then after a few months or a year, move on to the next one. It would take them years to have the same sort of generalized experience that I was given through the EIT program. 

Q: What inspired you to become an engineer?

A: The real truth is that I picked it at random. I couldn't think of what I wanted to do in my future and I just picked it randomly. 

Originally, I picked mechanical engineering. I actually went through the whole thing and found that I didn't enjoy the work, so civil engineering was much more enjoyable for me.

Q: Do you have a memorable project?

A: At the intersection of State Route 160 and State Route 98 there was a project that was about re-signing the road and re-striping the road in order to make it safer. I was given that entire project. This was the first time in my life that I had been given an entire project to oversee. That meant that from first stages to completion I was in charge of the majority of the tasks. I got to see that road beforehand and when it was completed and that was kind of an amazing feeling to guide that work to completion.