Seattle

AEI's Seattle office is on the 14th floor of the Westlake Tower, between the live/work downtown and South Lake Union neighborhoods. Our main conference room overlooks Puget Sound and the Olympic Mountains to the west. The Lake Union float planes' landing route passes between our windows and the Space Needle to the north.

We don't usually tell outsiders about the dry season here, it's a little secret we keep to ourselves. There are plenty of giveaways, though. Ask someone at a party what they do, and they'll answer, "I kayak," "I hike," "I restore vintage boats," or, "I do a lot of fly fishing." Biking is popular-mountain and road (we're perennial Bike-to-Work Week champs)-and our office has its own ski team. We stay in to read and to cook, and for monthly office movie night. You have to ask what they do for a job to get the word "engineering" out of our people.

We share our home town with a number of world-leading architects and other project partner firms. Seattle companies and institutions enjoy global prominence and we're grateful for the role we fill supporting their breakthroughs in research, healthcare, and technology. We're helping up the next generation in our field through the ACE Mentorship Program for area high schoolers.

"The most literate city in America," Seattle is a PAC 12 university town, praised for its parks, its world-class cuisine, and the bounty of award-winning wines from the nearby Columbia Valley and Willamette River regions. Seattle is home to Boeing, Microsoft, Starbucks, Amazon, and REI. There's a new art museum, major league sports venues right downtown, Broadway shows before they hit Broadway, hydroplane races, ballet, opera, and symphony. The music scene that gave us Ray Charles, Nirvana, Jimi Hendrix, Heart, Quincy Jones, and Pearl Jam makes for a great nightlife. If you want to get out of town, Seattle is a true Pacific Rim city and point of departure for Alaska, Hawaii, and Asia, or maybe just Portland or Vancouver.