There's a decent amount of research that finds a correlation between engineering degrees and terrorists:

> According to two European social scientists working in Britain, Italian Diego Gambetta and German Steffen Hertog, who present their case in Engineers of Jihad: The Curious Connection between Violent Extremism and Education, the presence of engineers among known Islamist extremists is 14 times greater than can be explained by random distribution. It was a finding the authors reached with caution and even a certain resistance. “We are social scientists,” Hertog explains in an interview, “so we are always seeking socio-economic explanations. We accepted this idea that there might be personality traits, expressed first in choice of profession and then in political ideology, very reluctantly.”

* https://macleans.ca/news/world/why-do-so-many-jihadis-have-e...

> This article demonstrates that individuals with an engineering education are three to four times more frequent among violent Islamists worldwide than other degree holders. We then test a number of hypotheses to account for this phenomenon. We argue that a combination of two factors – engineers’ relative deprivation in the Islamic world and mindset – is the most plausible explanation.

* https://researchonline.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/29836/1/Why_are_t...

* https://spectrum.ieee.org/extremist-engineers

As an engineer, I do think there’s some mild but noticeable correlation in bulk. But there are other categories which would be much more predictive. And most of the correlation with engineers are actually a confounder effect from things like multigenerational socioeconomic status, or religion.

If you were to control for other variables I doubt there’d be much correlation. After filtering out engineers who belong to other categories with stronger associations to authoritarianism, you’re more likely to be left with the hyper-individual-freedom types than the hyper-authoritarian types.

I am electrical engineer and electrician working in regulated areas. In both areas the frameworks limits my choices and obviously I am very authoritarian. There is no room for discussion. If I need a DC DC converter for 2 amps I will pick one rated for 4 amps. No discussions! If I need to install a heat pump 60 feet away I will pick 5x6 square millimeter cable and all the circuit breakers from installation manual. There are no options or opinions. I communicate this in polite way to the clients.

And this flows in other areas. If I need a functional vehicle with cheap upkeep I optimize for it. I invest in low risk products since the income is limited. I know that people with plan and confidence are scary, you don’t meet them every day.

Possibly, but it's just as much a predictive trait of being libertarian, which for all its faults, is extremely anti-authoritarian.