Design engineer

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Design engineer is a general term that covers multiple engineering disciplines: Electrical, mechanical and civil engineering are the basic three. Architectural engineers, in the U.S., and building engineers in the U.K., are also examples of design engineers.

The design engineer is distinguished from the designer/drafter by virtue of the fact that a design engineer sets the direction of the design effort. The design engineer usually leads the project, directing the designer/drafter as necessary. He/she works with industrial designers and marketing to develop the product concept and specifications and directs the design effort from that point. Products are usually designed with input from a number of sources such as manufacturing, purchasing, tool making and packaging engineering. When the design involves public safety, the design engineer is usually required to be licensed, for example a Professional Engineer in the U.S. There is usually an 'industrial exemption' for design engineers working on project internal to companies.

The design engineer may direct a team of designers to create the drawings necessary for prototyping and production, or in the case of buildings, for construction. However, with the advent of CAD and solid modeling software (Autodesk Inventor, SolidWorks, Pro/ENGINEER, CATIA, etc, for example) the design engineer may create the drawings him or herself.

The next responsibility of many design engineers is prototyping. A model of the product is created and reviewed. Prototypes are usually functional and non-functional. Functional prototypes are used for testing and the non-functional are used for form and fit checking. This stage is where design flaws are found and corrected, and tooling, manufacturing fixtures, and packaging are developed.

Once the prototype is finalized, after many iterations, the next step is preproduction. The design engineer, working with a manufacturing engineer and a quality engineer reviews an initial run of components and assemblies for design compliance. This is often determined through statistical process control. Variations in the product are correlated to aspects of the process and eliminated. The most common metric used is the process capability index Cpk. A Cpk of 1.0 is considered the baseline acceptance for full production go-ahead.

The design engineer may follow the product and make requested changes and corrections throughout the life of the product. This is referred to as "cradle to grave" engineering.

A design engineer is often expected to have the following qualifications:

  • a Bachelor of Science degree in engineering from an accredited institution
  • experience or knowledge in manufacturing and fabrication, or construction methods

Also, industrial design engineers must have:

Students interested in pursuing a career in design engineering should include Analytical Geometry or Pre-calculus and Physics into their high school curriculum.

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