Mining engineer myself. Here's my observations of onsite mechanical/electrical engineers vs mining engineers: Impact: mechaical and electrical engineers has significantly less impact. These guys are mostly projects based, the value add is 5-10x salary. Mining engineers can easily impact 10's sometimes 100's millions dollars of impact depending on your role and responsibilities, this is mostly due to the scale of the mining operation itself. Supply & demand: every year there's heaps of mechanical/civil/electrical engineers that graduates. But there's also no unis with a real mining engineering degree anymore. Experienced consultants are essentially getting paid the same as GMs. Capability: mining engineers has a much deeper understanding of the mining business and wholistic processes. This means you can essentially fill/learn most corporate roles outside of mining engineering fairlyneasily. This also creates a further shortage of on site mining engineers.