Masters in Engineering Management Jobs
Masters in Engineering Management Jobs
Industrial and financial firms looking for engineering managers are often searching for individuals with very different skill sets. Industrial, mechanical and civil engineering managers work in a very different milieu than engineering managers developing software and data systems for firms in the financial services sector. Our list of jobs just scratches the surface; an engineering management degree implies a degree of training and level of ability that may not be perceived in job candidates with a bachelor's or master's degree in a specific engineering discipline.
We have scanned some of the major market divisions within the economy to extract some representative engineering management opportunities that may exist across a number of business niches. The job title is generic in the sense that each corporation or placement firm is looking for someone with specific skills and experience. But there are some categories of engineering management that seem to have relevance in a variety of industries and we have tried to list a sampling of those categories here.
1. Quality Assurance: This job is critical to virtually all businesses; the nature of the position and the title assigned to it may vary from company to company. In many instances a quality assurance engineer supports the product development team, particularly with complex products that contain sophisticated technological components. Manufacturers of medical equipment, production facilities for pharmaceuticals, and auto component assembly plants are three examples of businesses where quality assurance is critical. The role of an engineering manager in this function is to assure that the design process has sufficient testing, that the production standards meet the mark for errorless assembly, and that completed products are thoroughly tested by qualified engineering staff.
2. Systems Engineering Manager is a position that can be found in many defense industry corporations where new technology is a major feature of every product ordered by the Pentagon. While systems engineering is an engineering management role of sorts, with the production of military equipment there are many firms that want an engineering professional with an even wider perspective on development procedures and standards. Sometimes a systems engineer can be caught in a scheduling bind that an engineering manager may see as a threat to the overall project. It's that long view that a systems engineering manager provides in an industrial setting.
3. Engineering Integration Manager: This is another position that can be found in most defense contracting facilities, but it is also an important function for large construction projects or for complex engineering situations associated with systems redesign. In the construction field the design-build technique of project development can lead to engineering jobs on separate segments of a project being completed in parallel but with little or no communication between design groups. An engineering integration specialist provides the management that can cause engineering disconnects to mesh. In the IT world there are many platforms, computer languages and hardware configurations that require engineering management and guidance for upgrades or changes that cannot threaten data or business continuity.
4. Information Assurance Engineering: Protection of data has become a paramount concern for major corporations, retailers and consumers. In the corporate environment information security is a constant process of looking for and patching potential security weaknesses. In corporations with multiple data platforms, information assurance can easily become an engineering management challenge since implementing new security measures for multiple platforms and maintaining connectivity requires careful technical oversight.
5. Healthcare Systems Engineering: Healthcare informatics has become an important component within every healthcare delivery system, but managing a database at one facility or within one organization is just a part of the needed data communications. Large healthcare organizations need sophisticated communications with physicians and other providers as well as with insurance carriers. Integrating data systems and adding new extensions to them requires engineering management from a professional that knows software engineering, information assurance, and multi-platform integration. It's a challenging and rewarding role for the right engineering management professional.
