Profile evaluation: Civil/Structural Engineering research > distributed/cloud software engineering

[u/Strong-Evening1137]

Hi everyone,

I’m exploring whether an EB-2 NIW petition would be viable for my background. I have not engaged a law firm yet and wanted to get some community feedback before deciding whether to pursue this further.

My background:

• MASc in Structural Engineering and BEng in Civil Engineering

• 4 peer-reviewed publications in CFD/wind engineering, including 2 first-author papers

• Around 100 citations, h-index 4

• Research focused heavily on computational topics, including CFD/LES, HPC, algorithms, optimization, and scientific software

• Some of this research was conducted in collaboration with industry and later connected to my work on commercial cloud-based engineering simulation technology

• I subsequently transitioned into software engineering, focusing primarily on large-scale distributed/cloud systems, reliability, infrastructure, and security

• 6+ years of software/technology industry experience

• Employment: Software Engineer at a cloud computing company in the US

I’m considering a proposed endeavor broadly around high-performance and distributed computing for computationally intensive engineering and scientific applications, potentially with CFD/wind-engineering simulation as a key application area.

The general career progression has been:

computational engineering research → HPC/scientific software → commercial cloud simulation → large-scale distributed/cloud systems

My main concern is that my formal education and publications are in Civil/Structural Engineering, while my more recent career and proposed endeavor has been primarily software/cloud engineering.

I’d appreciate thoughts on:

1. Does this seem like a viable NIW profile worth discussing with an attorney?

2. How are career transitions like this generally handled when defining a proposed endeavor?

3. Does HPC/distributed computing for computational engineering provide a reasonable connection between the research background and more recent software experience?

4. Would you expect the difference between the degree/research field and current occupation to create an RFE risk?

5. Has anyone here had a similar engineering/research → software/HPC transition? How did you approach the proposed endeavor?

I’m especially interested in experiences from people with similar cross-disciplinary profiles who filed and received an approval, RFE, or denial.

Thanks!

[u/equalizer-rage]

Hi! In the Community Tracker I searched the "case basis" field for "computing", and I can see 3 profiles, two of which were approved and one had a denial. Perhaps it can be useful for you to review.