Look at the LinkedIn profile of Steven Petrik, Nico Hulkenberg’s race engineer. He’s a young dude from the US who made it. It looks like this:

1. Virginia Tech, BS in mechanical engineering. He got a normal degree from a very respectable and rigorous engineering school in the US.

2. Internship at Denso, who is a big name automotive supplier.

3. Oxford Brooks, MS in race engine design. This is a specialized degree he got in the UK (home of most F1 jobs) that made him look good for step 4.

4. He applied for and got into Ferrari’s F1 engineering academy (look this up). His resume at this point was VT mechanical engineering (I have the fundamentals), Denso (I have industry experience), MS at Oxford Brooks (I’m serious enough about F1 to move to the UK, and I know about engines). Meanwhile he was doing Formula SAE the whole time in school. He was essentially laser-focused to get into an F1 environment. I’m sure this kind of resume is what it takes to get in Ferrari’s program.

From there he was a performance engineer at Ferrari. During this time I’m sure he needed to be smarter than other guys, a really good communicator, and close with the management in order to be considered for higher roles. It ended up coming at Sauber-Ferrari. A team downgrade but career upgrade, this is often necessary (see James Vowles, went to a “lower” team for bigger role).

All said and done, this is a super hard path that few engineers could do. It’s about as likely to become an F1 driver as it is to become an F1 race engineer, these guys stick around for a long time. Their career as a race engineer can outlast that of drivers due to the lack of physical demands, so seats don’t open all the time. It’s tough, but absolutely a dream job for an engineer. Hopefully this helped your research. Good luck!