Design engineering jobs involve the use of certain computer programs to design their product. They need to be familiar with those programs so they can create any design they need. Their job will depend on the company they work for. If they work for a cell phone company like Qualcomm, they’ll be designing new phone technologies. They’ll be designing new layouts for cell phones. If they work for the military they’ll be designing weapons. That’s quite a difference from cell phones. So they need to be well versed in all the different kinds of physics and physical sciences so they can take on either project.
Schooling is required to become an engineer. You must at least have your bachelor’s degree and many go on to get further education. When you’re competing for a position, it’s good to have more schooling behind you to make yourself more competitive. It’s also good to have some experience already. With design engineering, you’ll need to have an impressive portfolio of designs all ready. These portfolios will often be the determining factor to you getting a job. If you have great ideas and great designs and if you’ve already come up with some new innovations, you’re bound to impress someone with those ideas. Since this field is a very creative field, there are ways to bypass schooling if you have an impressive resume.
Salaries start around $60K a year and can go all the way up to well over $100K a year, depending on how much schooling you have and how strong your portfolio is. If you have incredible ideas and you’ve protected yourself by patenting those ideas, and you know you have great ideas, you can pull a little more weight in negotiations. If you’re young and unaware you might get taken advantage of. Your boss might steal your idea and claim it as his own. This is why it’s important to protect your ideas with patents to start with.
Design engineering can be an interesting job due to the creative nature of it. Your designing will often be based around the same product line: cell phones, cars, automatic weapons, etc. but each year you’ll be given new specs. You’ll have new criteria to follow. Each year, you’ll be designing something new and slightly different from the previous year. So that keeps it interesting.
