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UPSC Engineering Services Examination (ESE / IES): Electrical Engineering

Evidence status: 🟡 secondary. The pattern below has been stable for several cycles. On 2026-09-27 it was cross-checked against multiple non-official sources. Checking it against the ESE 2027 notification on upsc.gov.in is hive task T-002.

ESE recruits Group A and B engineers for central government engineering services. For an EE graduate it is the hardest and most rewarding of these exams. Its technical syllabus is GATE EE plus a few extra subjects, and it adds a general studies paper and descriptive mains papers.

At a glance
Conducted by Union Public Service Commission (UPSC)
Stages Preliminary (objective) → Main (descriptive) → Personality test
Final merit Prelims 500 + Mains 600 + Personality test 200 = 1300. Prelims marks count towards final merit
Age 21 to 30 years, with category relaxations as per the notification
Qualification Degree in engineering, or an equivalent listed in the notification
Services The notification lists the services and posts for each engineering discipline every year

Official sources

Official previous question papers

Note: As of this run, direct access to the UPSC repository is returning 403 Forbidden. Please check the official site directly for available years.

Exam pattern

Stage Paper Type Marks Time
Prelims Paper I: General Studies and Engineering Aptitude (common to all disciplines) Objective 200 2 h
Prelims Paper II: Electrical Engineering Objective 300 3 h
Mains Paper I: Electrical Engineering Descriptive 300 3 h
Mains Paper II: Electrical Engineering Descriptive 300 3 h
Personality test Interview — 200 —

Objective papers carry a negative mark of one-third of the question's marks for each wrong answer.

Syllabus

Prelims Paper I (General Studies and Engineering Aptitude) covers ten areas: current issues of national and international importance relating to social, economic and industrial development; engineering aptitude (logical reasoning and analytical ability); engineering mathematics and numerical analysis; general principles of design, drawing and safety; standards and quality practices in production, construction, maintenance and services; basics of energy and environment (conservation, pollution, climate change, environmental impact assessment); basics of project management; basics of material science and engineering; ICT-based tools and their applications in engineering (networking, e-governance, technology-based education); ethics and values in the engineering profession.

Electrical Engineering (Prelims Paper II covers all twelve; Mains splits them in two):

Mains Paper I Mains Paper II
Engineering Mathematics Analog and Digital Electronics
Electrical Materials Systems and Signal Processing
Electric Circuits and Fields Control Systems
Electrical and Electronic Measurements Electrical Machines
Computer Fundamentals Power Systems
Basic Electronics Engineering Power Electronics and Drives

Compared with GATE EE, the extra technical subjects are Electrical Materials and Computer Fundamentals, plus microprocessor basics inside Analog and Digital Electronics. See the subject map.

How to prepare (free, in order)

  1. Build the technical core on the GATE EE sequence. It covers about 10 of the 12 ESE subjects.
  2. Add Electrical Materials and Computer Fundamentals once the core is stable.
  3. Treat Paper I as a separate subject, 30 to 45 minutes a day from the start. Its official sources (PIB, Ministry of Power, MNRE, BEE, CEA) are free and listed in the resources page.
  4. For Mains, practise descriptive answers from the official papers: derivation, labelled diagram, units, and a final line that states the result. Write, don't just read.
  5. Solve every official Prelims paper topic-wise, then as timed full papers.

Free resources

  • Subject courses, simulators and Paper I official sources: free resources
  • Overlap with GATE, SSC JE, RRB JE and the CSE EE optional: subject map