The Middleman

Answer 1

The product engineer is perhaps the most important developmental engineer in the process of service and product project completion. The product engineer rides the line between the engineering design team, concerned mostly with making the product or service work, and the sales and marketing team, concerned mostly with selling said product or service.

The job description of most product engineers requires a technical background in an engineering discipline. However, the product engineer must also have excellent communication and marketing skills. The best product engineers also have experience in process improvement, or streamlining the entire procession from concept to finished, packaged product.

Aside from the technical background, many successful product engineers will also minor in general business or marketing on an undergraduate level.

Product managers will often need a detailed understanding of debug, product test, diagnostic, product test, and failure analysis techniques.

The job description is perhaps best summed up as simply "making a marketable product."

Because the product engineer is associated with the sale of the final product, he or she can often receive bonuses based upon the sales and revenue of a product. The product engineer is usually paid on salary for his or her technical expertise, making this job the perfect "hedge" for those unwilling to go into completely commission based positions, but wanting to take advantage of the increased potential of percentage based income.

On average, a product engineer can expect to make around US $90,000 for his or her services, with salary and bonuses (with the obvious potential for more based upon the size and success of the product produced).

As the product engineer sees the product through the entire process, the job description varies from other types of engineering and can include the following responsibilities:

1. The coordination and management of product introduction schedules and activities.
2. The coordination and management of cross product issues throughout the entirety of the product life cycle.
3. Working closely with process and testing engineers to drive debugging activities, speed entitlement, yield enhancement, and reliability qualification in the bring up and production release phase.
4. Driving activities with assembly and packaging sub contractors to design and define packages and assembly processes.
5. Communication technical status of the product to the management team.