Senior M&E Engineer with 13 years of built environment experience here.

Besides garmen or consultancy, I would recommend main contractor as M&E Engineer. In fact it is better to work in a main con within the built environment as compared to M&E consultants. Better pay and lesser work load. Starting salary above $3.5k++.

And from what I see in this chat, garmen or STATBoard while it pays well, you are actually just attending/organising meeting. The real engineering is being done by consultants and Main Con.

You can start of with any company and I would recommend to do HDB project as they are pretty well defined and easier to pick up technical knowledge. But do stay for the entire project cycle to learn from the start of Piling to TOP inspection. With a solid 2 years experience, you can then jump to another company and can look at $4.5k to $5k.

After your first HDB project, try to target niche projects within the built environment such as LTA, airport, hospital, data centre or tunneling. These pay well above average and you don't have to compete against the lowballer FT.

And yes, while you do need to work under the sun, this is occasionally. 6 months into my current job in MNC, I have yet to work under the hot sun or gone to site. In my previous MNC company, if I need to go to site, I just do it early in the morning. So the sun is not hot yet.

With the main con experience and electrical degree, you can also venture into sub contractors electrical as Assistant Project Manager or equipment OEM as sales engineer.

There are plenty of opportunities for local within built environment. Almost companies will welcome you with open arms bec it is not common.

All the best.