Manufacturing Engineers have been in demand ever since the industrial revolution. The US is home to some of the largest manufacturing companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, General Motors, Ford, and Tesla. Today, industries across the United States starting from automobiles to chemicals, hire manufacturing engineers to take care of the industrial processes and manage the factory floor.
Salary trends for Manufacturing Engineers
While most manufacturing engineers start as apprentices or interns to get accustomed to the machines and workflows, they go on to manage multiple workflows with tens of engineers and automated machines on each. The salary trends also show an overall increase with years of experience as a manufacturing engineer takes on more responsibilities and gets better at handling multiple scenarios. As you can see from the graph shared below, there is a slight decrease when the years of experience move from 1 to 3 years.
This can be due to the fact that to be hired as a manufacturing engineer with less than a year of experience, one might have to be highly qualified, thus commanding a higher salary than those with 1-3 years of experience. From then onwards, the salary trends are all steadily increasing to around 16-20 years of experience. It is expected that most manufacturing engineers would move on to leadership roles after around 16-20 years.
Search results for Manufacturing Engineers
Search results for Manufacturing Engineer jobs showed more than 84,000 job posts in more than 11000 companies. The top 5k companies had an average of 15 openings for Manufacturing Engineers each.
The number of unique job titles was close to 15000. These results were taken from 1st Jan of 2021 till 26th of October 2021.
Top skills in demand for Manufacturing Engineers
Manufacturing Engineers may work in different sectors but have a common skill set that is a must-have. Our team at JobsPikr scraped job data from the US job market and found some interesting trends. The most sought-after skill set is design which is understandable since all manufacturing engineers would need to design workflows. They have to decide which stages can be automated and which would need manual interventions. High error-prone stages may require a maker and checker mechanism where there needs to be a stage following it to make sure that none of the produced items have any inconsistencies in them.
The skill that is second on the list is operations since almost all manufacturing engineers not only need to design the system but also oversee its day-to-day running to ensure no issues creep in, resolve errors, and improve efficiency wherever possible.
These two are followed closely by tooling, another important skill that any manufacturing engineer needs to have– after all a master needs to know the tools and machines he would have to work with. Without having a thorough knowledge of these, designing an efficient workflow for a production line may prove difficult. Management and Leadership are in the 4th and 5th positions since most manufacturing engineers with a few years of experience in their belt are expected to take charge of the factory floor, guide engineers, and maintain company best practices while making sure the production figures are achieved. This requires strong management and coordination skills since multiple teams need to be handled in tandem.
Job Types for Manufacturing Engineers
Manufacturing engineering job posts usually propose full-time positions. Job data studied by JobsPikr shows that jobs with undefined types come second. This may be because, in many positions, the candidate may first be evaluated, and then it might be decided whether it would be a long-term commitment or if the company would want to hire the person on a trial basis first.
Contract-based, part-time, and internships come in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th positions. These positions are very few as compared to the full-time job offers. These are usually taken up by those not having relevant educational qualifications, who want to get their hands in the game before applying for full-time positions. There are negligible volunteer positions seen for such a post.
The jobs themselves can also be sorted based on seniority. While a majority of these jobs are entry-level, almost a third is mid-level whereas a very small percentage is executive-level.
One reason behind this can be the fact that most manufacturing engineers with more years of experience move on to leadership or management roles, where their job profiles and positions change.
Top regions with most Manufacturing Engineer posts
Not every city has similar job opportunities since every city has different industries that have flourished over time. Manufacturing Engineers are more in demand in cities or towns with large factories and industrial workflows.
In the US, the top cities in terms of demand for manufacturing engineers are
New York, Atlanta, Chicago, and Washington, in that specific order. While the demand in New York is almost double that of Washington, Chicago and Atlanta stand midway in the graph.
The US and Manufacturing Engineer jobs
While the USA may not be the top name in the list of companies that manufacture products, a lot of high-end products that require special expertise, as well as skilled and experienced personnel, are still built within the country. This includes chemicals, airplanes, vehicles, weapons, and more. These industries hire thousands of new workers every year with the growth of new-age companies and the evolution of old ones. Manufacturing engineers would always be in demand here, although the niches and industries where they are most in-demand may change. For example, battery and electric vehicles manufacturing has boomed in recent years and has led to new job opportunities in a sector which was earlier non-existent.
