So, I am finishing my junior year of an MET program. I've been job hunting for something that can be mostly full time and allow me to go to my evening classes this summer and my one class twice a week next fall.

I was contacted by a recruiter for a Project Engineer position which will allow for classes to be taken.

The pay is great (most I've ever made), but I feel I might be out of my element as I have no idea what a project engineer should be doing.

All they have really told me is "you'll write work instructions".

I'm going to fake it 'til i make it.

Also, the title is Senior Project Engineer, so I've got that going for me.

Anyway, any project engineers on the boards? Care to give me advice and/or is there any reference material you suggest?

Without giving away too much op/persec, it is in the aerospace industry with a .gov contractor.

do you know what field it is in?  Project engineers usually will be designing the solution to a problem.  The senior title means you can handle more complex problems.  When I work OSP for a phone company I started designing small access jobs and moved to large area projects then was titled senior project engineer.  IDK if it parallels what you are going for but thats my best broad guess.

It is a manufacturing environment. The filed is aerospace. They make a specific assembly for certain contracts. I don't know how much I can say at this time.

Where I work, the project engineers are really not designing anything.  They report to a project manager and just handle small details like scheduling, completion reports, etc.

It depends on how the company os organized and the size of the projects.

I worked in Electronics Warfare for 35+ years.

As a Senior Project Engineer' it was MY job to make sure it worked.

At the company I worked at I was on staff to a VP level Program Manager and reported to him on a daily basis.

I handled projects up into the $100 million range.

I performed initial top level design breakdown from requirements.

Other engineers in the company then had to interview with me seeking tasks on the job.

Less experienced engineers might be placed in charge of a single board in a larger design.

More experienced a box within the design.

New grad engineers ended up designing test fixtures for boards and boxes to aid manufacturing.

Project Engineering was NOT a starting position unless you had 12 to 15 years of direct experience.

Withing the engineering portion it was one of the highest slots with almost unlimited salary potential while still performing at least some higher level engineering.


I earned well more than the Associate and plain Program Managers on the jobs I worked.

My VP boss could not earn ANY overtime.

At least on real rush jobs (Quick Reaction Contracts) I could eran straight time over 40 hours and up to 70 hours with justification.

The justification was decided by my boss.

If I could convince him he authorized it.

I then earned even more than he did.

I'm a project engineer with 20 years experience. Its a wide open area and really depends on the job requirements. My primary specialty is electrical engineering. I mostly work with industrial automation which includes a lot of capital projects and project management. The job requires a lot of experience.
It's hard to give you any advice without knowing any details.

"Mechanical Engineering Technology"? That's like engineering without all that yucky math, right?

Don't worry, scrot, just tell 'em you're a senior in the fall. That job was made for you.

There are two less calculus classes, I believe. We use the same thermodynamics textbooks. Other than that I cannot really think of anything different.

So do you have anything to contribute to this topic or are you just going to keep trolling? I assume you are calling me a scrotum.

I don't need to tell them anything, I'm starting on Monday. I think you are jealous that I landed in a senior title.

I know that this facility is contracted to do wheel/brake assemblies for some .gov contracts. Not sure what platforms. I will be creating the technical/work instructions for the "tempering" process of the brake assembly parts, as far as I can tell.

Don't take it personally man, I am just an asshole being an asshole on the Internet. I haven't been a Senior Project Engineer since finishing my Senior Project some two decades ago. Best of luck to ya!

I was doing department procedures, engineering reports, work instructions, etc.

I say was because this site of our client's is accounting for almost half of the companies global scrap production. They had no choice, but to de-fund the project.

I was given other options by my boss, but that same day I was called with an offer for an ME position, designing industrial pump systems, and $15k more a year.

Pretty excited.

Thanks for all of your responses.

Project Engineering 101

Tasks - define what they are; define the success criteria (when am I done); define the inputs needed; define the outputs to be generated
Budgeting - what financial resources are needed to do the task; how much is available; define the time-phased budget expenditure plan
Schedule - how long will it take; how much schedule margin do you have
Staffing - who do you need to do the tasks (names or skill sets); ensure they are available when needed
Status Reporting - periodic evaluation of progress on tasks; budget expenditures versus plans; forecast of cost at complete; issues; updated plans


Earned Value - learn what it is, how to calculate it and what the results mean.


Oh, by the way, you have to do your engineering work, too.

This.  At some companies a "Project Engineer" is a new grad that works on projects.  At others it is a 20+ year experienced engineer responsible for the technical aspects of a large project with multiple discipline lead engineers reporting to him, and each discipline lead managing a team of engineers and designers.

I went through comparing Technology vs Engineering degrees quite a bit with my son over the past handful of years or so.

Depending on the discipline, school, etc.  I have seen it range from stop after pre cal and take a physics without calc, with very different classes onwards, to the same first year of calc, same physics with calc, etc.

I co-oped under project engineers for about a year total at a paper mill.  Some of the projects that were going on during my time there was a new power boiler (forgot the output), upgrading some large stock pumps, heat exchanger additions and upgrades, and some other smaller stuff.  Basically we put together schedules, handled the budget, and managed folks.  Didn't really do a whole lot of engineering but still needed the background during outages and trying to start up new equipment.  I really enjoyed it and would love to do something similar when I graduate.

Thanks everyone.

I'm now working as a Mechanical Engineer for an industrial vacuum manufacture. Really, this field utilizes a lot of thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, and heat transfer stuff that I excelled at, so I'm pretty happy.

That little 't' on the end cam become important in areas that require a PE license.

In Indiana, and almost any state I'd be willing to move to, MET degrees that are ABET accredited qualify for consideration for Professional Engineering licenses.

Furthermore, I have little interest in getting a PE license. I will definitely take the FE exam though, just to keep options open

If you want to spend four years getting a t degree go right ahead.

It's interesting and I can do almost any job I want, with the title of Mechanical Engineer, Design Engineer, Mechanical Design Engineer, etc... Where is the downside?

The companies I worked at all added 'Design' to indicate it was not a BS in Engineering and paid less.
Sometimes a lot less.

For a long time it was driven by CFAR (Code of Federal Acquisition Regulations) on DOD contracts.

I have not looked if it changed.
Especially at larger companies their was a limit on what you could pay anyone on the contract based on years of education or experience.
We had some very experinced BS guys with many years of experience.
Ten years would allow us to pay them at the PhD level.

It was a real problem for many years in Electronics Warfare because the radar work was very much still a 'tweak it till it worked thing' at multiple GHz well into the 1980s.
Some higher power stuff still is.
We specified 'non-tarnishing silver' for the plating inside wave-guides for many many years at GHz frequencies.

I would note that ABET still does not accredit two year degrees.
That is how the 'Technology' degrees started.