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My job as a: Product Design Engineer

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  • 10-12-2011 3:22am
    #1
    Offy
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,701 ✭✭✭


    Occupation: Electro-Mechanical Design Engineer.

    Qualifications held: Cert in Mech. Engineering; Cert. in Industrial Automation; Cert. in IT; BEng in Mechanical Engineering; BEng in Mechatronics.

    Previous Jobs: CAD Technician; Maintenance Engineer; Helpdesk Technician; Automation Technician.

    Daily/weekly/yearly routine:
    Building prototypes - circuit boards, control systems, user interfaces, assembling mechanical parts made of metal of polymer, 3D modelling, writing reports and lots of maths (all done on a computer!). There is a lot of planning involved which means lots of meetings and sometimes you have to travel abroad with very little notice.

    Day In The Life:
    I get to work and the first thing I do is check e-mails. A lot of components are manufactured in the far east and they are in a different time zone so I get their e-mails at night time. After that its off to the lab to make prototypes or debug prototypes. Every part has to be inspected and tested before it can be used in a design. Once I have the lab results its back to the office to make alterations to the designs based on the lab results. It works out about 50% lab work and 50% CAD work.

    Age bracket: (optional): 30-40

    General comments:
    I've spent a lot of years gaining qualifications and that is part of been an engineer. We are always up-skilling as technology develops so fast. We have to keep up with it. If you like maths, physics, chemistry, computers and a job that involves figuring out how things work then it might be for you. Don't expect to earn enough to buy sports car or medieval castles to use for weekend breaks but you will earn enough to go on holidays every summer, put your kids through college and live a life without worrying about where you will get the money to pay the household bills. Logic is everything, emotions have no place in designing a product. You much focus on that the customer/consumer wants and not on what you think they want. Your either born an engineer or your not, getting a degree in engineering qualifies you as an engineer but it doesn't make you an engineer. Overall its a great career.


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    #2
    wmpdd3
    Registered Users Posts: 9,624 ✭✭✭wmpdd3


    I found you post very interesting, did you find it easy to find work after college?


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    #3
    Offy
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,701 ✭✭✭Offy


    wmpdd3 wrote: »
    I found you post very interesting, did you find it easy to find work after college?

    That was back in the nineties, I couldn't find work in Ireland so I moved to England where it was very easy to find work. There was a recession in Ireland in the nineties as there is today and coincidently almost one year ago I moved to NI for the same reasons. In my experience it is much easier to find work in the UK, the salary is much higher and engineers are more respected than in Ireland but thats just my experience.


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