Careers in aerospace/design engineering

[fly_antonov]

Hello everyone.

I' m considering going to college and following a bachelor' s degree in aircraft design starting September this year. Eventually I could continue and get a master' s degree in the field.

The tuition is free and there is an extensive practical training. The college has a 147 approval and provides Catia V5 training as well.
It is closely linked to a major Part 21 (instructors and alumni) that supplies structural parts for Airbus widebody programs among others.

I need some good advice.

What are the ins and outs?
How are the job prospects after graduation, as an unexperienced graduate?
Is anyone here on the Airbus Graduate programs?
What are the jobs we get to do in the beginning, what kind of career progression can we expect?
How long does it take to go from a graduate to a fully-grown aircraft design engineer?
What' s a typical starting pay?

I' d love to talk to some design engineers and read their stories.
I' m also interested in stories from design engineers who work for MRO' s.
You can PM me.

[fly_antonov]

No design engineers in here?

[400_Hertz]

Make sure you pass your Part-147 B modular exams.

I could answer your questions, but I'd only upset some types here.

http://www.helitavia.com/smilies/tumbleweed.gif

[fly_antonov]

What are the Part 147 B' s? Do you mean the Part 66 B' s?
Are there standards for aircraft design engineers comparable to Part 66 or is it only company standards under Part 21?

Any help is much appreciated.
I want to know what I might be headed for if I choose this path.

[400_Hertz]

Check that the Part-147 organisation will allow you to take the Modular exams. After you have finished your course, and looking for a job, the full Part-66 modules will permit more open doors for you than the degree alone.

You are heading for pain, look around for your job now (as you had just finished your course) and see what your chances are.

I hope you like maths.

[superdimona]

Sec. 147.1 - Applicability.
This part prescribes the requirements for issuing aviation maintenance technician school certificates and associated ratings and the general operating rules for the holders of those certificates and ratings.
I think you missed the part where the OP said he was interested in being a design engineer, not an aviation maintenance technician.

fly_anatov: I'm an engineer, but don't work in aviation sorry.

[fly_antonov]

Thank you very much. That helps alot.

Are you in powerplants or avionics or ... ?
I don' t have any particular preference, I' ll take any offers available.
Structures is preferential if I can get in somewhere big like A or B or BBD or EMB, otherwise I don' t mind working for Honeywell, Thales or RR, GE, CFM, IAE, PW.

Of course, I don' t want to end-up in a shop in the dark deep corner of a building drawing improved O-360 carburators for the rest of my days. :ok:

[Genghis the Engineer]

Hello everyone.

I' m considering going to college and following a bachelor' s degree in aircraft design starting September this year. Eventually I could continue and get a master' s degree in the field.

The tuition is free and there is an extensive practical training. The college has a 147 approval and provides Catia V5 training as well.
It is closely linked to a major Part 21 (instructors and alumni) that supplies structural parts for Airbus widebody programs among others.

I need some good advice.

What are the ins and outs?
How are the job prospects after graduation, as an unexperienced graduate?
Is anyone here on the Airbus Graduate programs?
What are the jobs we get to do in the beginning, what kind of career progression can we expect?
How long does it take to go from a graduate to a fully-grown aircraft design engineer?
What' s a typical starting pay?

I' d love to talk to some design engineers and read their stories.
I' m also interested in stories from design engineers who work for MRO' s.
You can PM me.


I'm not a design engineer, but I am an aeronautical engineer who has worked in and around the design process - including designing a few reasonably significant bits of flying machine.

Anyhow, a few thoughts:

- Parts 147 and 66 are all about maintenance and have little to do with design.

- Be careful of degrees called **** design, make sure that the degree you do is accredited for eventual issue of CEng/PEng/Eur.Ing/local equivalent by the national engineering institution in the same country as the university - better still, also by a big global player such as the Royal Aeronautical Society. Most such degrees are called something like Aerospace Engineering (or variants thereupon).

- Catia knowledge is well worth having, but it's no substitute for good stress / materials / aerodynamic / design process knowledge.

- Whilst this is not about aircraft maintenance, if you get the chance en-route to gain some reasonable maintenance experience, don't miss the chance - it's very useful.

- The next step is often to get onto the graduate scheme of a large aerospace company - airbus would be a very good example.Typically these schemes will rotate you around various departments and training courses as you develop for a couple of years, before promoting you into a junior engineers job somewhere in the company that you seem suited for.

- Lovezzin has the starting salaries about right for the UK and western Europe, possibly less elsewhere however. Professional Engineer salaries sit around £30-40k, management or senior engineer salaries between that and perhaps £80k depending upon status

- Career progression is largely of your own making; you can spend your life designing wing ribs, or as my father did get fed up of that and progress into engineering sales. Personally I did a couple of years design work before progressing via flight testing and airworthiness into senior management.

- Typically if you have a MechEng type degree expect to be doing mechanical design work, an electronic degree avionics, an aeronautical engineering degree could lead to most things if you take the right course options.

- Expect to never quite stop learning and training until you retire. After qualifying, 1-2 weeks training per year is probably about normal.

G

[fly_antonov]

Thank you.

I' m quite surprised at the low starting salary of a graduate.
Granted, a graduate is not worth anything until he can work individually but I didn' t expect that 5 years of study would barely and only potentially land me into a job where I would not even make twice what they make at McDonald' s.

Is this dictated by job market supply and demand?

Given the specifical character of the grade I would expect a low supply of new design engineers and a more reasonable starting salary.

Did Airbus reduce staff in its design engineering departments during the Power 8 cost-cutting campaign?

[Genghis the Engineer]

Graduate starting salaries in engineering and science aren't all that good, and your estimate of around 1.5-2 times what you'd get in McDonalds is probably about right.

But if that's the reason you take that job, then you're there for the wrong reason. The study is long and tough, and the jobs not easy either. Do it because you have a passion and fascination for engineering, or do something else.

But a senior engineering manager, or a science professor, is probably on around £70k and both can go higher: it's a case of how hard you push your career. You certainly won't get to those levels by luck however.

Regarding lay-offs, most big aerospace companies worldwide make redundancies every once in a while. It tends to be at the end of development of a large product: Boeing have the worst reputation in this regard, but I was about to go and work for Bombardier a few years ago when they laid 2000 people off and set a hiring freeze just before I was about to resign from my previous job. Everybody does it.

G

[portsharbourflyer]

Just to add, if you intend staying in the technical side of things then you really need to go contract to make a decent living. I would only ever consider a permanent job if it offered me that opportunity of flying along side an engineering role.

Contract rates for engineers in the UK between £28 to £36 per hour for design and stress
Safety and Software engineers tend attract slightly higher rates.

Contract rates in Europe are between 40-60 Euros per hour.

With about 5 years experience you can normally be considered for contract positions.

Genghis, AUK is the last place I would wish to see a young graduate end up these days. With AUK increasingly contracting out the technical aspects to sub-tier suppliers than an increasing number of DEGs are just ending up Project/Programme integrators and not actually involved in the detail design and analysis.

[fly_antonov]

Thanks for the advice, Genghis and Portsharbourflyer.

Is that so about AUK? That' s good to know. If I'm not mistaken that' s the only Airbus sites where they take graduates. Why don' t Toulouse and Hamburg have their own graduate schemes?
They seem to have only internships or jobs for experienced engineers.

I want to head into this one with my eyes wide open.

More info would be much appreciated.
Any AUK graduates around?

[portsharbourflyer]

fly_antonov,

Not necessarily the case across all departments; but certainly on the structures side.

There is also an increasing use of Indian sub-contract companies at the moment.

Just to add I notice you list your location as Bulgaria, you may be interested to know that EDC in Poland are one of the sub-sub-contract companies to AUK. So it may be of interest to you that Eastern European companies are getting involved in the Airbus programmes.

[portsharbourflyer]

Permy notice period 4 weeks,
Contractor notice period 1 week. So in my mind the extra three weeks of job secuirty is not really worth the pay difference.

It was worth staying permy when final salary pension schemes existed, sick pay is the only other benefit.

In about five years of contracting (not continuous as I have some time away flying instructing and working as turboprop FO) I have had about 2 and a half months where I have been out of work. Speak to most seasoned contractors and it is only in the extreme downturns that any have had any significant time out of contract (once every ten years). So while what you have stated above is not untrue, you will find in practice job security has generally not been an issue for most contractors.

Lozzin you will find that if you don't crawl down the corporate ladder that you will hit a salary ceiling very quickly as a technical specialist.

In 1999 the average salary for a Senior Engineer was listed as 34000, more than ten years later the average salary for a Senior Engineers is now 37000.

My take on it at present I prefer to work as contractor in the engineering industry; but given the choice of permenent engineering job or shelling out 30k to get another flying job, then I would certainly opt for the flying job.

[dubh12000]

I work in the powerplant side of the business. Again Catia is a great advantage, although a lot of players use ProE now also. Combining heat transfer or CFD to your capabilities makes you very employable. This also reads across to power gen turbines also. Here in CH you could easily make 100K Euro on contract, but again, they tend to keep you out of the juicy bits.

[fly_antonov]

Thank you lovezzin, dubh12000.
Your advice and inputs are much appreciated.

Rotary wing could be interesting too, indeed.

I' ve never heard of ProE.

About the money comment, I am not after the big money, I just want to have a job that I would enjoy doing and be able to give a comfortable life to my future wife and children.
I would not like do a job that would force me to toss all the rest of my life for it.

[lovezzin]

portsharborflyer has some good points. His figures for average Senior Engineer salaries are likely to be right! However, an average SE is probably about 30 - 35 years old, which is inline with the £1k for 1year rule of thumb.

I also think although there is 4 weeks notice for permanent staff, they cant get rid of you for the sake of it (or easily) as they can for contractors. For me, I like the sense of belonging to a design team, to a company and have quite a lot of pride when people ask me what my job is.

Fly Antonov, as an Engineer, you will always have a nice quality of life....You will never be rich, but you will never be poor...

Do research on who you would like to work for, look at the grad schemes on offer as different companies treat their grads differently.

Im lucky, my company has treated my very well. Im early twenties and have already been given an opportunity to work abroad for my company!

[Dodo56]

I believe Genghis very much hit the nail on the head, the only thing I might differ about is the salary levels. Maybe I've been unlucky but even in senior posts I was earning nothing near 80K, seems to me the 50-60K mark is closer to what you can expect in most senior engineering posts.

A comment also about the security of contracting posts. Most employers do make a distinction between permanent and contracting staff, and regard permies as the people who form their core team and receive training and career opportunities. Connies are brought in either to meet workload peaks or if their specialist skills can't be gained any other way. They are an expensive resource and are the first to be cut. You don't have to believe that, but I know a lot of connies who are no longer boasting their extravagant paypackets and are instead bemoaning not being able to get new contracts. IMHO it's something to do for a while to make a bit of money and gain contacts but anyone with a family would be foolish to rely on it as a long-term career.

[lovezzin]

In addition, a lot of companies have policy in place that if a contractor has been working in said company for 2 years, they are offered a permanent position or cut lose if rejected...

I think dodo56 speaks a lot of sense regarding salaries. 80k is possible but those on this salary are not really in a technical role (although they are capable of making technical decisions), they are generally head of a department with 2 or so sub-departments and have in excess of 40 Engineers working under them...those who are head of sub-departments are on around 50k I believe...just a guess on hearsay rumours ive heard...im at the bottom of the pecking order in my Job :P

ANYWAY, you are years of all this malarky, so I wouldnt worry about that!!

[Genghis the Engineer]

UK Law doesn't allow anybody to remain on contract for more than about a year before they have to start being treated as a permanent employee. Also, as Dodo rightly said, companies generally train their permanent staff (and give them pensions, paid leave, sick leave, p/maternity leave and so-on). The contractor who wants to stay ahead of the game needs to pay for their own training, will have much more expensive pension contributions, and a couple of weeks in bed with lurgi can be very expensive!

Lovezzin, I'd say that your description of levels and salaries is about right. Where I am it's around £35k for a functional manager, £50k for a department head, and £70k for a director with multiple areas of responsibility; CEO salaries depend massively upon the nature and size of organisation, as to some extent of-course will other director salaries. Whilst I don't work for them, I have a lot of contact with BAe and from conversations with colleagues there over lunch, it sounds like they're on about the same.

It is also worth bearing in mind that beyond about £30k, the higher salary is often a compensation for the much more boring, stressed or frustrating job. Doing pure technical work on £30k, and leaving most days around 5:30 suits a lot of people and I can fully understand why.

G

[portsharbourflyer]

Genghis,

G.E is the only company that enforces a 12 month rule for contractors; literally unheard of in the rest of the industry.

If you know guys at BAe then you will certainly know of long term permy-tractors that have contracted at one site for five years plus; I admit this is not something people can get away with now with the IR35 regulations; but it was certainly very common a few years back.

Lozzin; IR35 regs only allow you to claim tax benefits as a contractor at one site for up to two years; hence this is why contractors will now leave after two years at one site. Nothing to do with company rulings.

Most companies are now only offering money purchase pensions schemes, not any near as beneficial as the old final salary schemes of yester-year. My technical specialistion probably biases me to the contract sector, but even though contracting is not as lucrative as it once was; a vast majority of us still find the extra pay still out-weights the benefit of pension, sick pay and job security.

It is an individual choice which you prefer, contract or permy; also it is something that could be discussed as much as the mod vs integrated is discussed in the pilot sections of this forum. However Lozzin I do suggest you wait another five years and then give me your opinion.

Dodo, accepted some contractors do at some point go permanent, however I have still met a reasonable number that have spent a life time as contractors.

[matkat]

In reference to the drift contractor/permanent I have been a connie for 21 years had a permie job once for 14 months left because of the money. I am now head of department for a little known Asian/middle east airline my all in package is in excess of 100K GBP. My contract is based on a permytractor basis.

[massman]

I am (currently) a Design Engineering Manager in a major European A/c company but have been a subbie for the vast majority of my career, so here is my own very personal viewpoint.....

1. Sub-contracting. I have gained a lot of experience, had a lot of variety (aircraft, ships, satellites, airships) and (should have) earned a fair amount of money. I have also been lucky to have some quite responsible positions. In my particular case, I would say that this experience helped very much to get this current position. But.....
....it generally does not lead to a stable family situation and the world is changing, certainly with regards to Airbus and Boeing. They are pushing the rates down and any sub-contracting is more likely to be with their various levels of suppliers who are being tightly squeezed already.

2. With regards to Airbus. It is there intention, and they are well on their way, to become overall aircraft architects and integrators. Their direct involvement in design (structure, systems, etc) will become less. So if you can get in, and it is more difficult at the moment, then the career paths are becoming better developed and more supportive of getting high potential young 'uns in manager and aircraft architect positions quicker. I can't really add anything to the salary discussions going on.

So my recommendation would be....
- if you are interested in engineering design (structures, system installation, stress, etc.) then look to the suppliers (either just design or design and manufacture - GKN, Spirit, etc.) and even consider sub-contracting
- if you are interested in a career with Boeing or Airbus then talk to their HR departments first and look at specialising in one of the following areas...

Flight Physics (aero, loads, perfo, etc.)
Design and development management (configuration, project management, integration, requirements management, etc.)
Overall aircraft architect (broad knowledge)Hope it helps

[mmarron32]

Aerospace job prospects remain steady in the US. However, you most likely will need to be a US citizen to take advantage of them as many aerospace companies are government contractors and require special security clearance. One company that has jobs to offer is Northrop Grumman Aerospace Jobs. (http://jobs.meetngc.com/)

[natie]

Can anyone tell me if non degree trained Catia operators are used in the aerospace industry to ammend drawings etc to free up Engineers as they do in the car industry?
I am a maintenance LAME with over 20 yr's experience and looking at learning Catia as I have relatives that contract in the car industry who make drawing changes for engineers.

would be grateful for any feedback

[mohitkm]

What are the prospects for me if I am trained with CATIA V5 & Ansys WB from an authorized training center? I am from India & have a degree in mech. Currently a maintenance engineer in an Aluminum company fir past 2 & half years, I want switch my career. Will my past experience become completely irrelevant & I have make a fresh start? How much can I expect as a starting salary for an aerospace design engineer?

I would appreciate any kind of advice. It would be great to talk with someone who has any idea regarding the design sector in India.