Career growth for an FEA engineer.
Career growth for an FEA engineer.
(OP)
I have been working as an Analysis Engineer for little over 4 years now. All this experience is in Automotive/heavy machinery domain. Even though I like what I do, it feels very monotonous now, I often wonder what upward direction I can take from here.
Any suggestions regarding courses/training etc to take?
Any other inuts?
Thanks in advance.
Any suggestions regarding courses/training etc to take?
Any other inuts?
Thanks in advance.





RE: Career growth for an FEA engineer.
Systems.
Acoustics.
- Steve
RE: Career growth for an FEA engineer.
TTFN
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RE: Career growth for an FEA engineer.
Tobalcane
"If you avoid failure, you also avoid success."
“Luck is where preparation meets opportunity”
"People get promoted when they provide value and when they build great relationships"
RE: Career growth for an FEA engineer.
Oh, maybe you might become a team leader or whatever, but there are other guys going for that job as well, and even if they don't pull anyone in from outside to do it, and you get it, you'll probably find that the analysis you used to do is far more interesting then the team leader B/S, simply because that's the sort of personality FEA attracts.
So, if you are going to stick with node pushing as a job, some other alternatives are Crash, which looks like fun, Fatigue, which looks like agony, and Sompting guy's list. Multiphysics and co simulation are great buzzwords being thrown around.
An alternative you may not have considered is to spend some time doing the physical testing used to correlate your models. By this I mean working in a Modal Analysis Laboratory or a test engineering type role. At the very least it'll reduce your chances of getting RSI.
Cheers
Greg Locock
New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?
RE: Career growth for an FEA engineer.
Greg, it's kind of scary to think that there is not clear career path for FEA engineers, After all everyone wants to grow and earn more money as needs are also going to change over the time( wedding and kids and house and blah balh!)
Secondly, I've noticed that managers are more into deliverables, hours put it and super efficiency with tools than real enigineering. I mean, they have kinda stoppped asking 'why this' about analysis and are more concern about every other thing. If a guy-X can do something (without knowing why he is doing it) in less amount of time than guy-Y, guy-x is a hero.
I find MBD intersting and also planning to learn it but still not clear about where I would (or should) end up in 5 years down the lane.
Thanks again.
PBS.
RE: Career growth for an FEA engineer.
Tobalcane
"If you avoid failure, you also avoid success."
“Luck is where preparation meets opportunity”
"People get promoted when they provide value and when they build great relationships"
RE: Career growth for an FEA engineer.
New graduates where I work are liberally sprinkled around the various areas. It's very rare for any that land in FEA to want to stay there. Most move on to less specialized areas after not too long. Although they retain what the've learned.
- Steve
RE: Career growth for an FEA engineer.
Cheers
Greg Locock
New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?
RE: Career growth for an FEA engineer.
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: Career growth for an FEA engineer.
Sure, you can make a decent income, but as a FEA specialist you're always kind of in the background.
RE: Career growth for an FEA engineer.
Cheers
Greg Locock
New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?
RE: Career growth for an FEA engineer.
My experience and opinion is that this is pretty much true of almost all purely technical roles. I (half) jokingly say that when a project goes right, management and or marketing take all the credit, but when a project goes wrong, engineering gets all of the blame.
Generally a purely technical job is going to be a dead end at a lot of companies and not a career. Sure you will probably making more money, but 20 years from now you will be sitting at the same desk doing the same thing you are doing today. This is especially true at smaller companies. In these scenarios the only real way to advance your career is to go over to the dark side.
In large organazations, expecially defense companies, there are two basic career paths for engineers: managerial and technical. You can advance your career and still stay mostly technical, but if glory is what you are looking for, you almost certainly will have to leave the purely technical world behind.
In terms of FEA work, what I said above applies. If you want a job as an FEA engineer your best bet would be a large organazition probably in defense or automotive. Most small companies just don't have the workload to justify a full time analyst. In these scenarios FEA is but one tool in your arsenal and you could spend maybe only 20% of your time doing FEA.
FEA today is approaching what CAD has become. Anyone can be a mouse jockey and make pretty pictures. Your skills will have value if you move beyond basic static stress analysis.
RE: Career growth for an FEA engineer.
Moving into defense is not an option for me as of now because of security clearance and all. The problem with automotive industry is it's too unstable.
'Glory' etc does not feature in my wish list. What I want in life is to have good time at work for as long as I work and earn decent enough to provide my family a good life.
So my guess is climbing the ladder by adding a tool/technique a year, becoming a TL, PL etc in the process is the only way.
Cheers!