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).