This shift allowed him to serve as chief software engineer but also to take on outside consulting projects.

FORBES: Leading at Your Limits

Amit Ghate is a mechanical engineer who, after 10 years of consulting practice, decided to transition to a career in stock trading.

FORBES: We Must Stop Treating the President As Our Savior

In 2005 Lankford ditched a comfortable salary, hired away an engineer from Reuters and went hunting for consulting gigs optimizing speed performance for trading firms and hardware vendors.

FORBES: Picking The Fastest Black Boxes

Like many leading figures in the world of management theory, Bruce Doolin Henderson, the founder of the Boston Consulting Group (and the man most responsible for the Boston matrix), was an engineer.

ECONOMIST: Idea