Manufacturing Product Design Engineer
Career Area: Design, Media, and Writing
Occupation Group: Product Design
Salary
Percentile wages tell how much a certain percentage of an overall population in a geographic area or within a given industry or field makes. The percentile wage estimate is the value of a wage below which a certain percent of workers fall.
An example would be the 25th percentile, 25 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 75 percent earn more than the estimated wage value. At the 75th percentile, 75 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 25 percent earn more than the estimated wage value.
A typical Manufacturing Product Design Engineer earns the following wages (national and state):
State
The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $85,093
National
The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $90,239
What Does a Professional in this Career Do?
Responsible for the design of a new product, with specific reference to the manufacturing processes behind it. May also be partially responsible for engineering of materials, graphic design, ergonomics and aesthetics of the product.
Employment Trends
The job demand and job growth statistics shown here were derived from job posts over the past year. Expected job growth projections are extrapolated from year-over-year job post listing history.
Job demand and job growth is expected at the following rates:
| Location | Growth | |
|---|---|---|
| North Carolina | 12 | +4.5% |
| Nationwide | 294 | +3.3% |
Skills
A professional in this position typically utilizes the following skills in the course of everyday work in this exciting and challenging field:
Baseline Skills
The following are baseline skills every Manufacturing Product Design Engineer is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:
- Problem Solving: Problem solving consists of using generic or ad hoc methods, in an orderly manner, for finding solutions to problems.
- Teamwork / Collaboration: Experience working in collaborative efforts with a team to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way.
- Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
- Creativity: Mental characteristic that allows a person to think outside of the box, which results in innovative or different approaches to a particular task.
- Microsoft Office: Microsoft Office is an office suite of applications, servers, and services developed by Microsoft.
Specialized Skills
These skills are specific to working in this career:
- Design for Manufacture/Design for Assembly (DFM/DFA): Design for manufacturability (also sometimes known as design for manufacturing or DFM) is the general engineering practice of designing products in such a way that they are easy to manufacture.
- Product Design: Product design as a verb is to create a new product to be sold by a business to its customers.
- Mechanical Engineering: Mechanical Engineering, is the discipline that applies engineering, physics, and materials science principles to design, analyze, manufacture, and maintain mechanical systems.
- Finite Element Analysis: Finite element analysis (FEA) is a computerized method for predicting how a product reacts to real-world forces, vibration, heat, fluid flow, and other physical effects.
- Product Development: In business and engineering, new product development (NPD) covers the complete process of bringing a new product to market.
Distinguishing Skills
Any Manufacturing Product Design Engineer that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:
- Design for Six Sigma: Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) is a business-process management method related to traditional Six Sigma.
- Automotive Engineering: Working experience of Automotive Engineering. Automotive engineering, along with aerospace engineering and marine engineering, is a branch of vehicle engineering, incorporating elements of mechanical, electrical, electronic, software and safety engineering as applied to the design, manufacture and operation of motorcycles, automobiles and trucks and their respective engineering subsystems.
- PTC Creo: Working experience of PTC Creo, which is a family or suite of Computer-aided design (CAD) apps supporting product design for discrete manufacturers and is developed by PTC. The suite consists of apps, each delivering a distinct set of capabilities for a user role within product development. Creo runs on Microsoft Windows and provides apps for 3D CAD parametric feature solid modeling, 3D direct modeling, 2D orthographic views, Finite Element Analysis and simulation, schematic design, technical illustrations, and viewing and visualization.
- Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP): Working experience of Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP), which is a framework of procedures and techniques used to develop products in industry, particularly the automotive industry. It is quite similar to the concept of Design for Six Sigma (DFSS).
- Unigraphics: Unigraphics is a leading CAD/CAE/CAM software product developed and marketed by UGS (formally Unigraphics Solutions, Inc.)
Salary Boosting Skills
A professional who wishes to excel in this career path may consider developing the following highly valued skills:
- Medical Device Design: Working experience of Medical Device Design. A medical device is any apparatus, appliance, software, material, or other article whether used alone or in combination, including the software intended by its manufacturer to be used specifically for diagnostic and/or therapeutic purposes and necessary for its proper application intended by the manufacturer to be used for human beings for the purpose of diagnosis, prevention, monitoring, treatment, or alleviation of disease.
- Supplier Development: Supplier Development is the process of collaborating with suppliers to improve their processes and product manufacturing capabilities.
- Engineering Change Orders: Working experience of Engineering Change Orders. An engineering change order (ECO) is a documentation packet that outlines the proposed change, lists the product or part(s) that would be affected and requests review and approval from the individuals who would be impacted or charged with implementing the change.
- Engineering Leadership: Experience providing the technical leadership of change.
- Process Validation: Process Validation is the analysis of data gathered throughout the design and manufacturing of a product in order to confirm that the process can reliably output products of a determined standard.
Experience
This position typically requires the following level of experience. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.
| Experience Required | % |
| 0 to 2 years | 15% |
| 3 to 5 years | 60% |
| 6 to 8 years | 20% |
Many of the programs offered through NC State are designed for working professionals who need additional credentials to enhance existing work experience.
Students who do not have the expected level of experience may wish to look into internship and employment opportunities.
Common Job Titles
It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:
- Product Design Engineer
- Senior Product Engineer
- Product Design Engineer, Facebook Reality Labs
- Lead Product Engineer
- Senior Product Design Engineer
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