Background: Research in engineering education has pointed to the need for new engineers to develop a broader skillsetwith an emphasis on “softer” social skills. However, there remains strong tensions in the identity work that engineersmust engage in to balance the technical demands of the discipline with the new emphasis on heterogeneous skills(Faulkner, Social Studies of Science 37:331–356, 2007). This study explores how three unconventional students experiencethese tensions in the final year of their construction engineering program, and as they move in and out of workplacefield experiences.Results: Using a figured worlds framework (Holland et al., Identity and agency in cultural worlds, 1998), we explore thedominant subject positions for students in construction engineering classroom and workplaces in a 3-year Swedishengineering program. Results demonstrate that dominant subject positions for construction engineers can troublestudents’ identity work as they move across classroom and workplace settings.Conclusions: This study expands our knowledge of the complexity of students’ identity work across classroom andworkplace settings. The emergence of classroom and workplace masculinities that shape the dominant subject positionsavailable to students are shown to trouble the identity work that students engage in as they move across these learningspaces. We examine students’ identity strategies that contribute to their persistence through the field. Finally, we discussimplications for teaching and research in light of students’ movements across these educational contexts.