Manufacturing Engineer: What is the cost of hiring?

Why hire a manufacturing engineer?

The need for new staff can affect both your existing team and your bottom line. A great manufacturing engineer hire can help your business:

• Analyze manufacturing processes to identify areas for improvement or modifications
• Improve work processes, product design and assembly by applying their advanced knowledge to the manufacturing process
• Turn raw materials into a new, functioning product
• Develop company processes to help the company meet budgets and performance goals

Deciding between a full-time vs freelance manufacturing engineer

Before writing a manufacturing engineer job description or interviewing candidates, it’s important to decide if you need a full-time or freelance, part-time or contract manufacturing engineer (and what your budget will allow).

A freelance or contract manufacturing engineer may be the best option when you need someone to help with a specific, one-off project or task. For example, if you need someone to draft up basic concept sketches of a new product, a freelancer may be the right fit. However, if you’re looking for a manufacturing engineer to help out with all aspects of product development and design at your company, a full-time role may better meet your needs.

Where to find manufacturing engineers

To find the right manufacturing engineer for your business, consider trying out a few different recruiting strategies:

• Ask your network for referrals: Ask your network of connections, including friends, past coworkers and current employees, if they know anyone who may be a good fit for your manufacturing engineer role.
• Get involved in online tech communities: Explore websites like GitHub to find manufacturing engineers in your area who are posting their own projects and contributing to open source projects.
• Recruit at local universities: Get involved at your local college to find new engineering graduates who are enthusiastic about starting their first job.
• Post your job online: Try posting your manufacturing engineer job on Indeed to find and attract quality manufacturing engineer candidates.

Skills to look for in a great manufacturing engineer

Manufacturing engineers are an essential part of a company. Note which qualifications and skills are vital for hiring a suitable manufacturing engineer, such as:

• Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering or related field
• Proven work experience of more than 7+ years’ in quality control and design in product manufacturing
• Familiarity with CAD programs
• Experience with 3D modeling
• Advanced organizational, analytical and communication skills
• High proficiency in product development and computer-aided engineering software, such as SolidWorks or AutoCAD
• Excellent analytical and problem-solving skills
• Professional Engineer license (if applicable)

Writing a manufacturing engineer job description

A thoughtful description is important to finding qualified manufacturing engineer candidates. A manufacturing engineer job description includes a compelling summary of the role, a detailed list of duties and responsibilities, and the required and preferred skills for the position.

Consider including keywords that job seekers are using to search for Manufacturing Engineer jobs, such as:

• Manufacturing engineer
• Engineer 
• Mechanical engineer
• Engineering
• Manufacturing
• Process engineer
• Quality engineer
• Mechanical engineering
• SolidWorks
• Mechanical design engineer

Interviewing manufacturing engineer candidates

To hire a suitable manufacturing engineer, take the time to vet candidates and ask detailed interview questions to understand their knowledge and skills. Strong candidates for manufacturing engineer positions will be confident when answering a variety of questions about the following topics:

• Proficiency in collaborating with both creative professionals and product engineers
• Past experience in suggesting improvements to manufacturing processes
• How they’ve contributed to sales and profit goals of the company by actively improving manufacturing processes

Need help coming up with interview questions? See our list of manufacturing engineer interview questions for examples (with sample answers).