Research engineers may also be responsible for: Preparing cost estimates and analyzing cost parameters. Building prototypes, products, and systems for testing. Design testing procedures and coordinate to identify problems and solutions. Collaborating on standards for procedures and component requirements.
Research engineers are responsible for developing new products, processes, and technology that are used by businesses. They typically work in an office environment but may travel to visit clients or attend conferences as part of their job duties. The work environment is generally stable and comfortable, with few risks for injury or illness.
What Is a Research Engineer?
Do you love research and development?
Do you want to work with today’s most innovative companies, organizations, and institutions?
Then a career as a research engineer might be right for you.
Research engineers plan, design, develop, and build innovative equipment and technologies using a research-driven process. They perform investigations, testing, modeling, verifications, comparative analysis, and other forms of research to make educated recommendations. They support and guide organizations or clients in making informed decisions based on this data, which is then used to develop action plans for designing and implementing systems and equipment that supports key objectives. They also play an active role in strategic planning by providing ongoing research-based input and advice.
Research engineers are responsible for developing new products, processes, or technology for their employers. It can be done by collecting relevant information and data, analyzing it, performing tests, and creating optimal solutions that meet the needs of their employer.
Some industries where this career applies include medical or health care, transportation, military, computer hardware/software development, and product development.
With so many options available to you as a research engineer, there’s no doubt this is an exciting time in your professional life!
Research Engineer vs. Research Analyst
Research engineers and analysts provide an essential service to their company by helping to develop or improve new products, processes, and technologies. Research engineers are responsible for the design of new products and technologies, whereas research analysts collect financial data, analyze it and prepare a research report.
Research engineers must have strong mathematical skills to be successful in their roles. They must also be able to work independently on projects that require a high level of technical knowledge. Research engineers may travel to different sites to oversee specific projects or meet with clients about new product development.
Research analysts must also have strong analytical skills to prepare accurate reports on financial data that companies can use as they make critical business decisions. A strong background in math is required for this role, as well as an understanding of accounting principles such as depreciation and amortization.
Research Engineer Job Role
Research engineers are highly educated professionals who use their knowledge and expertise to help develop the latest products and technology.
Research engineers primarily work with an understanding of technical processes, machines, and systems. They improve existing methods, develop new technologies and processes, and help make new innovative technologies. In addition to working theoretically and analytically, research engineers perform studies, experiments, and analyses on technical systems or components.
As their name suggests, research engineers also research a particular topic or idea. It involves collecting relevant data from sources such as experiments or simulations. They evaluate this data using mathematical formulas to transparently present their findings to clients.
They create presentations and lectures or publish scientific literature to transparently present their findings to clients.
Research Engineer Roles and Responsibilities
If you love being a part of the research team but want to make your ideas a reality, you might be interested in becoming a research engineer. Research engineers work with scientists and engineers to develop new products and processes that can be used in many different ways.
Research engineers might be employed by an organization specializing in R&D (research and development) or by the government or military. Some research engineers work for large corporations, where they may help create new technologies for use in manufacturing or medicine. Other research engineers work for research organizations like universities or non-profit foundations.
The duties of a research engineer vary depending on the type of position held but generally include the following:
- Laboratory-developed materials are analyzed, implemented, and tested.
- Innovative concepts are used to design functional instruments or devices.
- Writing research proposals and maintaining contact with sponsors.
- The coordination of a project team made up of researchers and staff.
- Establish and manage the operating and capital equipment budgets for the team.
- Identify, evaluate, and manage vendors to support early-mid phase device prototyping.
- Perform data analysis to identify trends and opportunities of improvement.
- Coordinate product return, on hold, and product destruction operations.
- Enhance the product through algorithm development and code implementation.
- Actively lead in team engagement action planning and implementation.
- Prepare and contribute to technical documents, product manuals, and protocols.
- Design and oversee manufacturing of test equipment and apparatus.
- Assist in process development, product optimization, including manufacturing and QC procedures.
- Help organize and participate in field trials as required.
- Lead scientific evaluation and participate in diligence and negotiation activities.
- Assist with the evaluation and recommendation of new equipment and technology.
- Audit review programs and make corrections based on findings.
- Serve as technical project lead (principal investigator) for integration process development programs.
- Work closely with internal product teams to understand and address their requirements.
- Review work products and documents to ensure technical rigor and quality.
Research Engineer Skills
Research engineers are highly skilled professionals who work to develop solutions to complex problems. They gather data and samples, then analyze their research to create the optimal and innovative solutions their employers need.
Research engineers work in various fields, including medical or health care, transportation, military, computer hardware and software, product development (industrial and commercial), and energy (oil & gas, renewable energy, mining).
Some of the skills that a research engineer must have included the following:
- Problem-solving skills
- Critical thinking skills
- Strong math skills, including calculus, trigonometry, and algebra
- Knowledge of statistics, probability theory, and data analysis methods
What does a research engineer do?
The duties of a research engineer vary on the type of engineering they work in and their industry. However, some of the general or common responsibilities of a research engineer include:
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Conducting research to identify solutions for industry problems
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Develop concepts for existing or new products, processes or equipment relevant to their industry
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Design industry-relevant products, equipment or technology based on concepts and ensuring functionality
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Building product and system prototypes for testing purposes
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Using specialized equipment to analyze and test processes, equipment or materials
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Using statistical processes to assess data
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Manage and lead members of design or research teams
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Coordinate timelines, resources and tasks to achieve project goals as project leader
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Preparing reports summarizing tests and their findings
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Writing research and grant proposals
The average salary for a research engineer
The national average salary for research engineers is $94,463 per year and $123,325 per year for senior research engineers. A senior research engineer may refer to individuals who have more advanced degrees, and experience in the field or who must manage more significant tasks and responsibilities at work.
Skills required to be a research engineer
Performing the role of a research engineer requires you to utilize a range of both soft and hard skills. Some of the skills that will help you succeed include:
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Analytical skills: These skills refer to your ability to observe, research and interpret concepts. Using analytical skills enables you to develop complex ideas, solutions and improvements, which is a crucial responsibility of research engineers. You will use these skills to create products, processes or technology relevant to your industry or develop improvements for existing materials.
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Communication skills: You need to communicate your findings effectively in both verbal and written formats. Your duties may include conducting presentations or writing reports to convey important information or recommendations to team members, managers or clients. Communication skills include the interpersonal skills you need to collaborate successfully with members of your project teams.
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Technical skills: Depending on your industry, you need to show proficiency in its relevant tools or equipment. For example, if your role requires you to develop software or technology, you may need familiarity with particular programming languages. Usually, the specific research engineer job description will inform you of the necessary technical skills you need to perform the job.
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Project management skills: At some point, you may need to lead teams through the product development process or other projects. When performing this responsibility, you will need to show organization and time management abilities to ensure you and your colleagues stay on track to complete goals on time.
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Problem-solving skills: This role requires you to develop solutions to problems faced by your organization or within your industry. Sometimes, you may receive assignments on what to work on, or you will identify issues yourself and work toward improving relevant processes or components of the product or system. As a research engineer, you need to use creativity to ask questions and look at problems from a variety of perspectives to form more innovative solutions.
How to become a research engineer
Follow these steps to pursue a career as a research engineer:
1. Obtain a bachelor’s degree
You must first receive a bachelor’s degree in an engineering field. Research engineers can come from a variety of engineering disciplines, such as civil engineering, electrical engineering, environmental engineering or mechanical engineering. So you may determine a specialization to pursue based on which industry interests you most. Make sure to obtain a degree from an accredited school, which is typically required for licensure.
Engineering students typically spend the first two years of their degree program taking coursework in relevant subjects such as advanced mathematics or sciences, including physics and chemistry. Once you have completed these prerequisites, you can take courses focused on your engineering specialization.
2. Gain work experience
To gain relevant work experience during school, you can participate in internships or cooperative work programs. As an intern, you may work for a company over a semester or summer. In co-ops, your school may partner with companies to provide work experiences for its students. You may work for the same company over an extended period during your schooling, which means you often have to balance having a full-time job and schoolwork.
Any opportunity that provides you with hands-on, relevant experience as a research engineer will be valuable to potential employers. Having a degree is important, but employers will be very impressed if you have demonstrable experience working in the field and performing the tasks of the job.
3. Receive a Professional Engineer license
Gaining your Professional Engineer licensure can prove beneficial because some employers only have an interest in PE candidates. Some engineering jobs even require that you have PE licensure—for example if you work for a government agency. Being a PE can not only increase the opportunities available to you, but it also serves as a way to demonstrate your significant qualifications and abilities as an engineer to both employers and clients.
The requirements for licensure can vary by state, but generally, you will need to have graduated from an accredited school, have at least four years of work experience as an engineer, and pass the Fundamentals of Engineering and Principles & Practice of Engineering exams. If you are interested in becoming licensed as a Professional Engineer in your state, contact the engineering association that covers your geographic area for details on the requirements.
4. Consider getting an advanced degree
If you want to gain more senior positions, you may think about pursuing an advanced degree. Obtaining a master’s degree in engineering can take about one to two years to complete, while a doctorate can take two to four years. In these degree programs, you will take on more advanced and specific coursework related to your engineering concentration and gain more advanced research, laboratory and design experience. By participating in such programs, you can prove to employers that you have the necessary skills and knowledge to perform as a research engineer.
While in school, try to look at job listings for research engineers to assess the types of candidates employers are looking to hire. Some employers prefer candidates who have a master’s degree, so that may factor into your decision on whether to continue your schooling and pursue an advanced degree.
Below are some of our current teams and the work you may do on them.
- Algorithms: Conduct exploratory research and drive algorithmic and architectural advances on the critical path to AGI. Algos has been responsible for a number of high-profile OpenAI releases including GPT-2, Image GPT, Jukebox, DALL-E.
- Alignment: Fine-tune large language models to perform tasks in accordance with the user’s intentions. Explore learning from human feedback and assisting humans evaluating AI. Recent projects: InstructGPT, Book summarization
- Applied AI Research: Develop innovative solutions and open-ended research to solve real-world problems. Care about applications driven by user feedback and long-term research with significant impact on products, while keeping a high safety product standard. Recent project: Text and Code Embeddings in OpenAI API
- Code Generation: Research and develop AI programmers, the neural models that write, debug and improve computer programs. Creating AI which can solve hard symbolic reasoning problems is one of the most difficult problems in modern deep learning and you can attack it head-on. Seek new ways for increasingly powerful AI systems to interact with the world through a very general interface of computer code. Recent project: Codex that powered the creation of GitHub Copilot.
- Language: Develop GPT advancements by exploring and forecasting future capabilities and resource needs. Seek a deep understanding of the scaling of our models across multiple orders of magnitude to optimize for best-case performance at the largest scale. Value impact over novelty – Team has found outstanding results from solid engineering with good design, implementation, and benchmarking.
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Mathgen: Help models learn to solve problems in informal natural text and prove theorems in formal languages like Lean. Large language models are known to make false claims that sound plausible, while mathematics requires the utmost rigor so training models that can reason robustly is a critical step on the path to AGI. Recent projects: Training Verifiers and Solving Olympiad Problems.
- Policy Research: Measure the risks, benefits, and overall impact of our technology on the world with an eye towards informing our policies and those of other institutions. Develop novel ways of characterizing model properties, work with internal and external partners to measure our economic impact, and build novel mitigations that help us safely deploy models in an iterative fashion. Conduct far-sighted research on ideal governance and regulation of powerful AI systems.
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Scaling: Build the model training software stack, solving problems at all layers of the stack including iteration speed, observability, compute efficiency, correctness, and fault detection and recovery. Scaling owns the engineering and research required to harness custom-built hyperscale supercomputers, the latest algorithmic improvements, and massive datasets to train AI models of unprecedented capability.
- Science of Deep Learning: Explore and understand the dynamics of training large models to guide both the training of current models and the trajectory of the next ones.
Research Engineer Salary
Salary in the US
The average salary for a research engineer is $1,06,581 annually, according to Glassdoor.
But whether you’re fresh out of college or a senior research engineer, your pay will vary greatly depending on where you work.
Research Engineer Job Outlook
Research engineers are tomorrow’s experts, and they’re in high demand. It is if you’re looking for a career with a bright future.
Research engineers work in various fields, from aerospace to manufacturing to software development. They can be found in offices or laboratories, using tools, software, and equipment relevant to their specialized field.
The employment outlook for research engineers is strong and growing—the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that employment will grow 21% from 2021 to 2031, much faster than average.
| POSITION TITLE | Research Engineer |
|---|---|
| ALTERNATE TITLE(S) | Government Engineer, Research and Development Engineer, Basic Research Engineer, Component Researcher, Materials Engineer |
| EDUCATION & TRAINING LEVEL | Bachelor’s degree required, prefer graduate degree |
| EDUCATION & TRAINING LEVEL DESCRIPTION | Research engineers must have a bachelor’s degree. Employers value practical experience, e.g., cooperative engineering programs, prior work experience, or internships. |
| BRIEF JOB DESCRIPTION | Research engineers work with government, academic institutions, manufacturers and other sectors of the wind industry to plan, manage and conduct projects to develop and assess new wind turbine technologies and processes that produce the most electricity at the lowest cost. Researchers in component manufacturing study cutting edge technologies and invent new processes or components helpful in wind power technology. |
| PREFERRED LEVEL OF EDUCATION | Master’s degree |
| PREFERRED LEVEL OF EXPERIENCE | See the Bureau of Labor Statistics for more information. |
| ESTIMATED/EXPECTED SALARY | See the Bureau of Labor Statistics for more information. |
| JOB PROFILE | Research engineers work with government, academic institutions, manufacturers and others to plan, manage and conduct projects to develop and assess new wind turbine technologies and processes that produce the most electricity at the lowest cost while withstanding atmospheric loads. To achieve this goal, research engineers:
Research engineers may also be responsible for:
Engineers use computers extensively to produce and analyze designs, generate specifications for parts, monitor product quality, and simulate and test how a turbine or component operates. Because of the complexity of wind turbines, research engineers may come from a wide variety of engineering disciplines such as aerospace, civil, computer science, electrical, environmental, health and safety, industrial, materials, or mechanical engineering. |
| JOB SKILLS |
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FAQs
1. What do you do as a research engineer?
Research engineers are a critical part of any research and development team. They are responsible for preparing cost estimates and analyzing cost parameters, building prototypes, products, and systems for testing, designing testing procedures, coordinating to identify problems and solutions, and collaborating on standards for processes and component requirements.
2. What qualifications do you need to be a researcher?
Becoming a research engineer is more complex than just getting a degree and looking for jobs. You’ll need to consider the following steps:
- Obtain a bachelor’s degree in an engineering field
- Gain work experience
- Receive a Professional Engineer license
- Consider getting an advanced degree
3. How can I become a research engineer in India?
If you want to make a career in research and engineering, it’s essential to start with a bachelor’s degree in an engineering field. You’ll also need at least five years of work experience as a research engineer.
In addition to your bachelor’s degree, you’ll need to become a Professional Engineer (PE). It will allow you to be licensed in your state and help provide credibility for your job applications.
Consider getting an advanced degree, such as a Master of Science or Doctorate in Engineering (ME/DE). These degrees can provide you with more knowledge in your field and give you the ability to teach others about your work.
4. Is a research engineer a scientist?
Scientists and engineers are often confused with one another but they are two very different disciplines. While a scientist may spend her days studying the world around them and how it works, an engineer is more focused on using those findings to create new solutions.
5. Does a research engineer need a Ph.D.?
To be a research engineer, you’ll need at least a bachelor’s degree in engineering—and you’ll probably want to have some professional experience in your field. While it’s not strictly necessary, many companies prefer candidates with Master’s degrees or other learning experiences that demonstrate their proficiency in the area.
6. What degree does a research engineer need?
You’ll need a bachelor’s degree in engineering as a professional engineer. However, employers may prefer engineers who have received additional education—such as a master’s degree—to hone their skills further. It can be beneficial if you’re interested in a specific engineering field and want to expand your knowledge base within that area.
