All You Need To Know About the Design Engineer Career Path

This career path best suits learners who love innovation and creativity

But, is design engineering a good career option for you?

Let’s find out. 

In this blog, we will define design engineering and aim to understand the career responsibilities of design engineers. 

 

 

 

Who Are Design Engineers and What Do They Do?

Design engineers are experts in design systems, products, machinery and equipment. Their work overlaps with other fields, including electrical, civil, structural, and chemical engineering. 

The main responsibility of a design engineer is to ideate, design and create cost-effective solutions using Computer Aided Drawing (CAD) or Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) software. Design engineers create strategies for enhancing existing models and plans for creating new ones.

Additionally, they create design prototypes after evaluating their functionality. 

Design engineers need to be team players. They instruct manufacturers on the design requirements and engage in technical research to determine current needs in the industry. Design engineers can work for engineering, manufacturing, biotech, and design consulting firms.

 

To summarise, the routine tasks of a mechanical design engineer include:

• Creating product prototypes using computer-aided design (CAD) and computer-assisted engineering (CAE) software
• Reviewing design briefs
• Looking up information and analysing possible design options
• Evaluating a design's usability and safety
• Changing designs
• Creating reports and delivering them to clients and project managers
• Working in conjunction with manufacturing engineers

 

Skills Required To Be A Design Engineer 

To be a mechanical design engineer relevant certification is important. You must have a mechanical engineering degree to get a job role in design engineering. Apart from this, you need to be proficient in engineering software such as AutoCAD, Catia, Rhino, and Solidworks. 

 

You need more than technical skills to get the best designer job opportunities. You must have basic knowledge about the specific industry and excellent communication skills with an eye for detail. To summarise, the following are some skills you might want to invest in before searching for job opportunities as a design engineer:

 

• Domain knowledge (gained through education) 
• Technical skills and industry project experience
• Good communication skills
• Creativity 
• Eye for detail 
• Analytical thinking 
• Knowing how to be a team player.

 

A Career in Designing After Mechanical Engineering 

Are you still wondering if a career in design engineering will be good for you? 

Don’t worry; we’re here to ease that worry. These are the job roles you can select as a design engineer.

 

Project Engineer: A project engineer oversees technical and engineering projects for their organizations. This entails managing a team, funds, and maintaining timelines for the project. Project engineers interact with senior levels of management about the progress of a project and assist in resolving issues on-site. 

 

Drafting Technician: A drafting technician's responsibility includes using computer software to develop relevant design plans for constructions, products, and manufacturing machinery. They work with architects and convert blueprints into 3D computer designs. Similar job profiles include CAD drafter or CAD designer, as technicians in all these roles need to be proficient in AutoCAD. 

 

Manufacturing Engineer: A manufacturing engineer works in manufacturing industries and oversees their execution. They also conduct relevant research for innovation in specific areas of manufacturing. The career objective of a manufacturing engineer is to build tools that generate reliable output at marginal cost. 

 

Other common job roles in the field of design engineering include mechanical designer, production engineer, biomedical engineer, and process engineer. 

 

India has tremendous potential for careers in design engineering. Top companies offer design engineer job opportunities for mechanical engineering students and graduates in cities like Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, and others. 

 

The average salary of a design engineer is ₹5,00,000 per year. The salary usually ranges from ₹3,00,000 to ₹13,00,000 per annum, determined by the job role, skillset, experience, and company. 

 

Besides an engineering degree, design engineers need an in-depth understanding of technical software. Looking for relevant exposure in this field while pursuing your degree is a good idea.

Internships are very helpful in introducing you to the design engineering world. 

 

The top design engineering candidates take extra courses to gain training in specialized skills, either a specialized master’s course or a simple skill-enhancement course. 

 

Skill-Lync offers many courses to improve the career potential of students and boost their growth as mechanical design engineers. Check out our postgraduate programme in CAD for more information. 

 

Conclusion

The best way to improve your chances as a design engineer, is to build up your technical and soft skills.

Applying for internships, specialized courses, or postgraduate programs is the traditional method of helping learners gain industry experience. At Skill-Lync, we enhance your design engineering knowledge and give you hands-on experience with the help of our comprehensive post-graduate program in CAD. Check us out and get a free demo of our mechanical and electrical engineering courses today.