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.

[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]

huh?

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.

[Genghis the Engineer]

Originally Posted by 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.

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