<p>How can an engineering student eventually get into a R&D engineering job or at least increase the chances of such? I don’t want to do something like patent law, consulting, regulatory affairs, etc. I’m not downplaying those jobs but I don’t see myself doing those sort of things as an engineer.</p>
<p>What can I, as an engineering undergrad do to stand out to employers when applying to R&D positions?</p>
<p>You do realize that there are a lot of engineering jobs that are real engineering but are not R&D, right? I mention this because the things you listed are not generally “fall backs” for R&D - they are different careers altogether, requiring different skills and often different educational paths. </p>
<p>You should also be aware that there is a lot more “R&D” than there are “R&D jobs” out there. Relatively few jobs are full-time dedicated to advancing the state of the art (an “R&D job”), but a great many design engineers are asked to spend at least some of their time doing R&D work. For example, I spent about a year designing RF circulators, of which about 25% was research into new designs that had never been built before - R&D work in a straight engineering job.</p>
<p>In general, true R&D positions generally want a high degree of technical competency, actual research experience, and an advanced degree. Getting into these jobs with just an undergrad is difficult but not impossible. Most of the time they will want to see a high GPA and a solid performance on your technical interview to be sure of your knowledge. Any research experience (like working in your professors’ labs) will help. And getting an MS or PhD will of course make it a lot easier( although getting an advanced degree normally requires a high GPA and some research experience anyway!).</p>
<p>Could you elaborate on what jobs would be “fall backs” for R&D?</p>
<p>Also, you say that many design engineers are asked to some work in R&D. How does a design engineer differ from an engineering who works solely in R&D? Specifically, what is the difference in role? What you said being the case, I will look into the a design engineering career.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice and knowledge!</p>
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No research. That is, the research engineer is attempting to create things that have never existed before and that no one is certain is possible, while the design engineer is essentially trying to modify things that already exist for a slightly new task, something that everyone knows will work but will just take some effort.</p>
<p>Example: A research engineer creates some new type of laser, something that has never existed before. Design engineers then build that laser in different sizes or configurations or power levels to accommodate different applications, without expanding the actual limits defined by the research.</p>
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Well, I would say that someone focused on the technical side can see four rough tiers:</p>
<p>At the top are research engineers, who get to push the limits of the state of the art.</p>
<p>Next are design engineers, who get to apply the state of the art.</p>
<p>After that are system engineers, who have some engineering work to do but also serve to interface between various design engineers.</p>
<p>At the bottom are support engineers, who don’t directly contribute to any engineering design work, but still require engineering knowledge and use it to perform select tasks and feed opinions or information back to the design teams.</p>
<p>Now, this is pretty rough because (1) this is really a continuum, not a discrete system, and because (2) depending on the company and the person your support engineers might be highly valued and important and actually contribute a LOT to the designs - there are complex and important tasks at ALL the levels, but the minimum required goes down with each step. But this works as a rough guide.</p>
<p>So if you were to take a bunch of people with aspirations (and at least nominal ability) to be R&D engineers, generally the best few would be research engineers and the worst would be support engineers.</p>
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<p>That is kind of hard to say since it will depend on each person. R&D departments are specifically tasked with research and development in a company, meaning taking brand new idea and researching them to the point of usability and then incorporating them into at least the preliminary design of a product. Depending on the company, sometimes these departments pass the prototype-level designs on to the rest of the company to refine, and sometimes they will finish a product themselves.</p>
<p>With that in mind, there are really two broad groups of engineers in R&D departments. First, you have the actual researchers. They direct the research efforts, dealing mostly with the new ideas side of things, and generally need an advanced degree, particularly a PhD, since research is not a skill you will really pick up as an undergraduate and only the basics as a Masters student. BS-level employees in those sorts of groups are likely to be playing more of a support role rather than planning and directing the heavy research projects.</p>
<p>The rest of the engineers not specifically in research groups are not a lot different than the other engineers in the company save the fact that they tend to have more experience or have shown to have a set of skills unique to that of their counterparts in the wider company. They are otherwise doing the same kind of design and/or maintenance work as the rest of the engineers, but specifically on these new, cutting-edge products. It is not uncommon for those guys to split their tasks between “R&D” jobs and more standard jobs in the company because the only real difference between those tasks is how new the products are and (potentially) how demanding the work is.</p>
<p>Boneh3ad really nailed it with his comment. </p>