Mechanical 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 Mechanical Product Design Engineer earns the following wages (national and state):
State
The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $80,726
National
The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $81,538
What Does a Professional in this Career Do?
Responsible for the mechanical design of a new product, with specific reference to the mechanical function of the final product. 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 | 7 | +4.5% |
| Nationwide | 165 | +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 Mechanical Product Design Engineer is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:
- 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.
- 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.
- Problem Solving: Problem solving consists of using generic or ad hoc methods, in an orderly manner, for finding solutions to problems.
- Research: Experience performing creative and systematic work to understand a product, market, or customer, either before building a new solution, or to troubleshoot an existing issue
Specialized Skills
These skills are specific to working in this career:
- 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.
- Mechanical Design: Mechanical Design or Machine Design is the branch of Engineering Design. Machine design or Mechanical Design can lead to the formation of the entirely new machine or it can lead to improvement of the existing machine.
- SolidWorks: Working experience of SolidWorks, which is a solid modeler, and utilizes a parametric feature-based approach which was initially developed by PTC (Creo/Pro-Engineer) to create models and assemblies. The software is written on Parasolid-kernel.
Distinguishing Skills
Any Mechanical Product Design Engineer that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:
- Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA): Failure mode and effects analysis (FMEA)also failure modes, plural, in many publicationswas one of the first highly structured, systematic techniques for failure analysis.
- Electromechanical Systems: As the name suggests, electromechanical systems or devices convert electrical energy into mechanical movement - and sometimes vice versa.
- Design Analysis: Design analysis is a software technology for simulating physical behavior on the computer.
- Component Design: the activity for the design of specific components including responsibility for material, cost, weight, reliability, durability, function, appearance, and serviceability.
- 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:
- Windchill PLM Software: Working experience of Windchill PLM Software, which is a Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software product that is offered by PTC.
- Electric Vehicle: An electric vehicle, also called an electric drive vehicle, uses one or more electric motors or traction motors for propulsion.
- 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.
- Power Electronics Design: Power electronics is the application of solid-state electronics to the control and conversion of electric power.
- Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM): Working experience of Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM), which is the use of software to control machine tools and related ones in the manufacturing of workpieces.
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 | 17% |
| 3 to 5 years | 61% |
| 6 to 8 years | 18% |
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:
- Avanos Senior Mechanical Product Designer - Global Design
- Mechanical Product Design Engineer
- Product Engineer Mechanical
- Product Engineer - Mechanical
- Product Engineer, Mechanical
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