I'm a sophomore in mechanical engineering and did a little more research as to what the job may look like. Are jobs in this field common where you're not stuck at a computer all day.

I really liked my cad class but I really do want to work with my hands occasionally. During highschool I'd tear apart any bits of machinery I could just to see how it worked. Is there a job with both in it, maybe seeing how a part failed and design it better or should I look at other options.

Areas of Impact Machines , Materials

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Katelyn Lichte , Corteva Agriscience

Answered Monday, April 9, 2018 at 9:21 AM

Nate,

Absolutely!  I'm actually in a role currently that gets to do just that.

There are a ton of jobs in the manufacturing industry that get you away from your desk, and have you working directly with the operators or the equipment.  The two jobs that will probably relate closest to what you just mentioned are:

Reliability Engineer: Reliability engineers work with the maintenance department to design preventative maintenance measures and plans to prevent equipment from failing.  They do this by analyzing previous failures, determining failure modes and working with maintenance/operations to optimize the equipment.  (This is very similar to the role I do, and I'd be happy to talk to you about it more.)

Quality Engineer: Quality engineers work more with the end product.  They perform quality tests to check to see if a specific part/product meets quality specifications.  If not, they often dig deeper and determine what went wrong and suggest methods for improvement.

There are other jobs that also relate to what you mentioned but these are often the most common "titles" that go along with the task!

Feel free to reach out if you want to know more or have questions.