I am a design engineer. This has been my profession in two companies for over 10 years in various industries. Over these years, I have found the experience of working as a design engineer both fulfilling and challenging.
How to become a design engineer?
To be a design engineer, I find this role requires someone to be knowledgeable in basic engineering skills and have a passion for success.
From the academic perspective, one has to be an engineering degree holder to qualify for any recruitment of sorts.
On top of that, a second-class upper degree and above would carry a greater advantage over the competition.
Mechanical Design Engineer Responsibilities
In the early days of my career, I remember it was all about gaining work experience as well as building a reputation among my peers. Basic engineering knowledge helped me understand the common technical language used by my more senior colleagues.
It avoids misunderstandings or awkward conversations with them. Apart from that, it provides a good foundation for me to operate several engineering tools in the beginning such as CAD or analysis software.
Many other tools or skills came along the way through on-the-job experience and lessons learned.
In all industries I worked in, I found that most design engineering work revolves around solving technical problems based on specific requirements. There are many types of problems that range from new product development, and manufacturing process capability to product cost management.
Each requirement most often requires a specific knowledge base or skill set to perform tasks.
Learnt Useful Job Skills
Examples of useful skills include materials selection, tolerance analysis, and basic statistics.
In my years of experience, I find engineering problems often come in various degrees; from simple to more complex intensity. Hence I find it very important to understand the problem and its requirements to the scope of the work needed and the solution desired.
Design activity is often multi-faceted with many stakeholders across an organization, hence along with all the engineering skills mentioned above, cross-function communication would be equally essential to get the support needed to arrive at a solution.
How Many Years to be a Mechanical Engineer?
Well, I’ve attended about four years of study in College. All in all, I do feel being a design engineer is a life-long journey that transcends over time.
While the key principle remains the same; technology keeps on evolving and makes our job simpler and more efficient.
In turn, this makes engineering design work manageable and enables the more complex problem to be solved.
I foresee design engineering work to be a more efficient and equally interesting profession to partake in as a future engineer.
But as of now, I am happy as a freelance content writer.