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

State

The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $76,454

National

The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $81,670

What Does a Professional in this Career Do?

Evaluates and tests products and manufacturing systems, to ensure that products are produced that meet quality and performance standards as well as safety and regulatory requirements. Develops product quality standards and monitors production and product testing.

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 Product Quality 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.
• Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
• 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.
• Microsoft Excel: Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications.
• Planning: Working experience with the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve desired goals.

Specialized Skills

These skills are specific to working in this career:

• 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.
• Product Improvement: Product Improvement is a cross-functional effort between the Engineering, Manufacturing, Quality and Marketing teams to monitor product quality/yield/cost and then identify, prioritize and implement ongoing product improvement activities.
• 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.
• Product Testing: Product testing, also called consumer testing or comparative testing, is a process of measuring the properties or performance of products.
• Manufacturing Processes: Experience working within and designing manufacturing processes to combine raw materials or components into a final product.

Distinguishing Skills

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

• Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM): A coordinate measuring machine (CMM) is a device for measuring the physical geometrical characteristics of an object.
• Calibration: Calibration in measurement technology and metrology is the comparison of measurement values delivered by a device under test with those of a calibration standard of known accuracy.
• 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.
• Engineering Drawings: Working experience of Engineering Drawings, which are a type of technical drawing, is used to fully and clearly define requirements for engineered items. Engineering drawing (the activity) produces engineering drawings (the documents). More than merely the drawing of pictures, it is also a language - a graphical language that communicates ideas and information from one mind to another.
• Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T): Working experience of Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T), which is a language of symbols and standards designed and used by engineers and manufacturers to describe a product and facilitate communication between entities working together to produce something.

Salary Boosting Skills

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

• Manufacturing Engineering: Manufacturing Engineering is a branch of professional engineering concerned with the understanding and application of Engineering Procedures in Manufacturing Processes and Production Methods.
• Reliability Engineering Studies: Working experience of Reliability Engineering Studies, which is a sub-discipline of systems engineering that emphasizes dependability in the lifecycle management of a product. Dependability, or reliability, describes the ability of a system or component to function under stated conditions for a specified period of time. Reliability is closely related to availability, which is typically described as the ability of a component or system to function at a specified moment or interval of time.
• 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
• Product Quality Engineer
• Senior Quality Engineer
• Quality Engineering Manager
• Validation Engineer

Similar Occupations

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

• Quality Validation Engineer
• Reliability Engineer
• Process Quality Engineer