Process Quality Engineer

Career Area: Engineering

Occupation Group: Mechanical and Related Engineers

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 Process Quality Engineer earns the following wages (national and state):

State

The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $85,540

National

The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $86,685

What Does a Professional in this Career Do?

Evaluates production processes and performance in manufacturing. Develops engineering to improve the quality of existing production processes or develops new processes to improve quality and efficiency.

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:

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 Process Quality 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.
• 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.
• Planning: Working experience with the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve desired goals.
• Writing: Experience expressing business messages effectively in written form. This may include planning drafting and revising as necessary.

Specialized Skills

These skills are specific to working in this career:

• Process Engineering: Process engineering focuses on the design, operation, control, optimization and Intensification of chemical, physical, and biological processes.
• Quality Assurance and Control: Working experience with processes used to measure and assure the quality of a product and ensuring products and services meet consumer expectations.
• Process Design: In chemical engineering, process design is the design of processes for desired physical and/or chemical transformation of materials.
• Quality Management: Working experience of Quality Management. Quality management ensures that an organization, product or service is consistent. It has four main components: quality planning, quality assurance, quality control and quality improvement. Quality management is focused not only on product and service quality, but also on the means to achieve it. Quality management, therefore, uses quality assurance and control of processes as well as products to achieve more consistent quality.
• Manufacturing Processes: Experience working within and designing manufacturing processes to combine raw materials or components into a final product.

Distinguishing Skills

Any Process Quality Engineer that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:

• IQ OQ PQ: Working experience of IQ OQ PQ, which refers to Installation Qualification, Operational Qualification, Performance Qualification - Qualifications that cover installation, operation and testing of new equipment, often in a healthcare setting.
• Lean Manufacturing: Lean manufacturing or lean production, often simply lean, is a systematic method for waste minimization (Muda) within a manufacturing system without sacrificing productivity.
• Minitab: Minitab is a statistics package developed at the Pennsylvania State University by researchers Barbara F. Ryan, Thomas A. Ryan, Jr., and Brian L. Joiner in 1972.
• Statistical Process Control (SPC): Working experience of Statistical Process Control (SPC), which is an industry-standard methodology for measuring and controlling quality during the manufacturing process. Quality data in the form of Product or Process measurements are obtained in real-time during manufacturing.
• Product Design: Product design as a verb is to create a new product to be sold by a business to its customers.

Salary Boosting Skills

A professional who wishes to excel in this career path may consider developing the following highly valued skills:

• 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.

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.

Common Job Titles

It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:

• Quality Engineer
• Process Quality Engineer
• Senior Quality Engineer
• Validation Engineer
• Quality Process Engineer

Similar Occupations

If you are interested in exploring similar occupations, you may want to research the following job titles:

• Reliability Engineer
• Quality Validation Engineer
• Product Quality Engineer