I have engineers that I employ that I have never met. There's no need to work for one company. He should join an engineering firm and submit product digitally.
Yes, depends on what type of engineering
Something like CAD design could be done entirely remotely I suppose.
Yes. Many small towns are based on factories that have in house engineers.
Yes. I live in a small town and there are a few companies that are high tech engineering.
A true engineer creates his own job
Especially if you live in the north north east, like philadelphia to boston region, there are a TON of engineering jobs littered throughout all the towns between those two cities.
If there is a big construction project in or near that town, then yes, for the duration of the project. Otherwise only if there is a factory or remote work possibility, or a long commute. Source: Former engineer.
Yes. Civil Engineers are needed absolutely everywhere. Every bit of the modified landscape (roads, residential subdivisions, retaining walls, berms, etc...) has been worked on by a private engineering firm (hired by the developer) and approved by a government engineer (city or county, depends on the local government situation). The same is true for every building bigger than a house.
Other engineers are more concentrated, but not necessarily in cities. For example, if a factory makes car parts then it will have a mechanical engineer, and maybe some other types of engineers.
Depends, if you're getting into validation engineering there's plenty of work in small towns with warehouses, places with cold room storage, universities, labs, places with autoclaves, tissue digesters, things that require sterilization, then there's HVAC equipment and automated systems validation. I made a living travelling to little po'dunk small towns doing validation work of the sort. Pays decent ~$3,000 for a week's worth of work plus expenses, depending on the headhunter you enslave yourself to.
There's remote opportunities for everything now, but some things are easier. Software is the easiest one, these days even the people in the office do everything remotely since it's all in the cloud. But if you're a ChemEng for example a lot of jobs are not possible without physically being at the plant, although obviously there are plenty of ChemEng jobs that don't involve being in the plant. And the plant itself could be in (or near) a small town too.
However you have to keep in mind that any kind of high tech job inevitably attracts people with advanced degrees. A lot of these will be urban liberals and they will bring their urban problems with them. So if you found a small town with good engineering opportunities, you wouldn't be gaining much, because it would end up being very unlike what people think of when they say "small town". The more logical thing is to work remotely from a place that has very few engineering jobs - or find a company with very conservative culture (good luck with that).
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