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Choosing between consulting and a salaried engineering job involves understanding billing rates, professional licensing, and liability risks. Topics cover how overhead and utilization rates impact firm profitability, the legal limits on using a professional engineer's stamp, and the fine line between employee and contractor classifications with their financial and legal consequences. This knowledge helps engineers and firms decide how to price work, comply with regulations, and manage risks tied to professional responsibility and employment status.

Interviewers can smell a rehearsed architecture, and the methods for preparing honestly point in different directions. Some start simple and iterate, others drill core systems until they are second nature, and others train the curiosity to reason through database choices and trade-offs live. Picking the method that matches how you think is what keeps you from freezing at the whiteboard.