Have you completed your graduation in product development and wish to learn about the profile of a product development engineer? Well, you have landed on the right page as it will guide you through the core job responsibilities, qualifications and skills required to become a successful product development engineer. Product development engineers work to create products and ensure that these products are user-friendly and assist in the marketing campaign. Professionals working as a product development engineers acquire a high degree of technical expertise and understand the real-time application of their products. In a nutshell, they not only design products but also optimist systems of production and usually foresee how clients would benefit from such products.
It is important that a product development engineer understands the market, the preference and need of the target demographics and most importantly, the behavior of the competitors. They need to identify a company’s goals, perform design analyses and integrate market research. Therefore, to acquire the right knowledge, the engineer should be up-to-date with the marketing aspects of the industry. They should have the basic understanding of the principles of strategic planning to be successful in their career.
The essential functions of a product development engineer:
- Work with drafting personnel on the product detailed layout, parts specification, Bills of Material and detailed prints.
- Interpret and analyses test data and make revision of products as required to comply with performance and safety requirements and standards.
- Develop test methods, procedures and instrumentation that are not covered by recognized rating codes and Approval Agency requirements. They administer and carry out these test programs with lab technicians andteam’s engineers.
- Interpret, analyses test data to perform root cause analysis and improve corrective action.
- Suggest new product ideas and maintain records for potentially patentable ideas.
- Participate in annual reviews with the departmental managers whenever the performance of a team member is evaluated.
- To work with the plant manufacturing engineering teams, commodity managers, lab supervisors, product engineers and with directors of product compliance to ensure efficient resolutions to any issues. They also provide technical assistance and information to other departments.
- Formulate product specifications and update it as and when required.
- Keep abreast of local and state code requirements and work with product managers and area sales offices.
- Assign and supervise tasks within project team members in order to efficiently complete a project. The engineers also track and organize progress of particular tasks that are critical to the projects.
- Report status of active projects, engineering change orders and change requests.
- Develop, update and maintain DFMEAs and help in the development of PFMEAs and the process control plans.
- Design and develop product component parts, product sub-assemblies and product complete assemblies according to the industrial standards.
- Organize and assign ECR work within project team as assigned by the chief engineers.
- Translating the functional, aesthetics and commercial product design requirements into technical concepts and solution.
- Safeguard product performance, reliability, quality, functionality as well as maneuverability.
The qualification required to become a product development engineer:
- Bachelor’s degree in biochemical or chemical engineering. A Master degree with thesis is highly preferred.
- Experience in statistical data analysis and experiment design
- Familiarity with GMP and GLP requirements
- Experience in design control
- Experience with using and drafting software
- 1-3 years of product development experience within pharmaceutical industry or medical device.
- Research experience in test equipment’s and friction test methods
The skills required to become a product development engineer:
A product development engineer should…
- Be strong in communication skills
- Be able to demonstrate abilities in research and development
- Be able to demonstrate potential for project management
- Be able to develop working relationships with experts in the field of technology
- Have a strong mind-set and effectively communicate the requirements of products within the department
- Use brilliant interpersonal and engineering skills to design new products and incorporate changes to the existing products.
Hopefully the above information will suffice your eagerness to learn about product development engineering and help you to get the best engineering jobs as a product developer.
