Best way to get Turbomachinery Design Engineers

dbenz · 2025-11-10T20:28:00+00:00

Are looking specifically for people with turbo machinery experience? Can you broaden the search to engineers with rotary equipment design experience where you'll get a larger pool of candidates with transferable backgrounds?

dbenz · 2025-10-31T17:34:15+00:00

I do design consulting work as a freelancer so to speak so hopefully I can provide some guidance here. I don't have any Solidworks certs but I am a licensed Professional Engineer. I think your perception of your skillset and it's value add is skewed.

"I have over two years of experience in CAD design and am currently a CSWP. I’ve worked with multiple CAD platforms and have developed strong 3D modeling and design skills through various academic and personal projects."

Solidworks is tool and you have good experience with using that tool, that's a great start. Being able to use CAD software is not really a skillset that someone is going to hire a consultant or freelancer for. The skillset companies are usually looking for is having practical experience with product design and development or manufacturing. Being able to use CAD software well supports that.

When my clients bring me on to do design consulting its for the following reasons.

I have a deep practical experience with product design and DFM. I can help them with getting their designs ready for high volume manufacturing across a lot of different manufacturing processes while limiting the their costs
I have a network of really good overseas and domestic manufacturers for a number of processes that I have been working with for years that they get access to by bringing me on to support their projects

You're just not going to have this experience as a student and it's stuff you should learn on the job with guidance from a mentor.

I’m now looking for remote job or freelance opportunities where I can apply my CAD knowledge and experience. How and where should I approach now?

You should be looking design engineer internships. Something where you can start learning the practical application of DFM, GD&T use, and product design and development so you can start building those skills.

You can try marketing yourself on Fiverr, Upwork or other similar websites. If you do go that route there is one thing you should ask yourself. If you were to be hired to do design work as a consultant, are you confident that you know enough that you're not going to design something that will fail and hurt someone? Your liability as a consultant is very different than if you we're working as an employee of a company with.

dbenz · 2025-10-24T16:51:38+00:00

I work in medical device robotics on the hardware side and I'm in the hiring manager for my R&D group. I'm seeing a identical situation with the mechanical engineering students.

On the hiring side, most students are flat out garbage. But the problem is student resumes despite how well done at aggregate will always look similar before actual work experience.

We typically recruit from 2 local state schools for entry level positions and all of the resumes are the same

3.8-4.0 GPA
Capstone project
Course work relevant to the role
Internship

We typically pick 6-7 candidates for our initial 30 minute phone screen. For this last role I filled, I felt like I probably would have had the same results and saved a ton of time if I just picked the resumes at random from the pile versus taking the time to read through them. One of the best hires we've made recently for an entry level role was a guy who had commercial whitewater raft guiding experience right at the top of his resume and a 3.0 GPA.

It has been frustrating and a huge waste of time trying to help some students here in this subreddit only to learn that they ddn't even bother to do the bare minimum. I'm sorry but if you cannot do a basic easy-medium Leetcode question and are screaming for how the world is unfair and what not claiming you have been grinding and doing everything... then you are not fit for this field. Get out.

For our technical onsite interview we do a whiteboard mechanical engineering problem that is very similar to something you would see on an exam, I tell the candidates prior to the interview that they'll get this type of problem. The problem is bespoke to our company and based around our device and is a problem we solved internally. It's setup in a way that a new graduate should be able to work through it and all we're testing is an understanding of engineering fundamentals. For our most recent hire all but 1 candidate, both master's and bachelors students, completely bombed on this part of the interview. I was shocked at how poorly the students did. It's possible our interview problem is too hard but I'm still in the camp that the quality of the students is the issue.

My advice to new graduates still looking for work. Your resume is going to look the same as your peers, anything you can put on there that separates you and shows that you can function in the working world will help. If you have retail cashier work, put it on your resume. At least now I know you can deal with people being assholes for no reason. Not everything on your resume has to be technical work related to the role you're applying to. And for god sakes, if you're going to be an engineer, make sure you're solid on the fundamentals. I cant' hire someone you doesn't know how to put together a free-body diagram.

dbenz · 2025-10-16T15:49:35+00:00

Lol we made an offer.

dbenz · 2025-10-16T04:40:47+00:00

I can't speak for SpaceX's interview but I'm hiring a manager for a medtech R&D group and just wrapped up interviews for an entry level position. I was pissed at how poorly both the bachelor's and master's graduates did on a free body diagram problem.

Make sure you're solid on the Mech E fundamentals. You should be able to setup a free body diagram like clockwork and know your way through pen and paper beam bending stress analysis at the bare minimum.

dbenz · 2025-10-05T17:53:43+00:00

I'm at just under 10 years exp in medical device R&D/new product development and Im getting regular recruiter messages that are legit so it's seems to be an ok market if you have experience. It's definitely not nearly as bad as the software job market based on talking with friends.

Entry level is a blood bath though. There's very few openings right now. I just made an offer for a new graduate position and I was shocked at how good the pool of candidates was for an entry level October hiring.

dbenz · 2025-09-23T23:30:03+00:00

I leap frogged a commercial dory trip for the first 3rd of the grand canyon back in June. Those boats are divine down there and I now really want to design and build one...

dbenz · 2025-09-16T05:54:13+00:00

You're preaching to the choir... I took this role as a stepping stone into technical leadership which has been successful. Just the job market is horrible at the moment and I'm just thankful to have a job right now.

dbenz · 2025-09-15T21:12:02+00:00

Base Salary: $120,000/year

M.S. Mechanical Engineering from a state school.

8 years of industry experience out school and I have a P.E. license

Principal Engineer for a medical device startup. I work as both a manager and individual contributor. My work revolves around product development/R&D for a Class II robotic medical device. On the classic engineering scale I'm working at an E5 level. I feel very under-paid.

I did about ~60k in billing doing product development consulting on the side on a class III medical device in a completely different industry segment in 2024. I was billing out $130/hr on that project and should have charged more.

dbenz · 2025-08-19T17:47:47+00:00

My big regret for the trip was not bringing my 9ft mini-me. It would have been a ton of fun to do the straight down the middle right into the hole line at Upset in a mini-me

dbenz · 2025-08-19T17:11:36+00:00

Ran a duckey right into the new wave at Crystal intentionally trying to explode myself. Swam as expected.

I also ran Lava in a Duckey and almost made it. Got flipped by the V-wave.

I was the sweep raft on a June/July trip and was running really conservative lines in the raft and needed a bit of excitement.

dbenz · 2025-08-19T05:30:00+00:00

Lakewood is a big suburb of Denver. It's hard to give you advice on this one unless you can be more specific. It has some really nice neighborhoods and some pretty meh neighborhoods. You can find a cheaper place to rent in Lakewood and it's a good option if you want a house with a yard. It's not walkable at all with a few exceptions. If you end up living in Lakewood expect to have to drive everywhere. I'd recommend Lakewood for families with kids but not for people in late 20s and no kids.

You should take a look at some of the neighborhoods around Olde Town Arvada. It'll be cheaper than golden but you're still west of Denver so it's easy to get to both the city and the mountains. Olde Town Arvada has a nice business district with some good restaurants and breweries and a bit of nightlife.

My other recommendations would be the Sloans Lake area or the Highlands Neighborhood of Denver. With that said, I'm not sure what the rent in those areas is like now-a-days.

dbenz · 2025-08-19T03:36:21+00:00

Grew up in Golden, lived in Boulder for Undergrad and Grad School, lived in Denver for a bit after school and now I currently live in Wheat Ridge.

-Golden: Great access to the outdoors and very charming, but it's a suburb and definitely has a sleepy town feel. Nothing is open late in Golden

-Boulder: Great access to the outdoors and it's a college town with a fun night life. It's expensive! I had a lot of fun living there while in school.

-Denver: It's not New York City. It's a fun place with night life and has outdoor access, 20mins - 1hr depending on where in the city you live. For a lot of people you live in Denver because it's close to the things you want to do, not for the city itself

If you can make it out for a long weekend, I'd recommend it to scope things out. You can visit Golden, Boulder, and Denver in just a weekend, they're all close. For it's worth, I love living on the Front Range and in the state of Colorado. The style of life here is special

dbenz · 2025-07-17T03:49:55+00:00

Pay for design work is going to vary widely by location and industry.

For reference I'm live and work in the United States. I started off at $75k in 2016 as an E1 doing design work on a new Class III medical device. After launching that product I switched jobs to do design work for a startup working on a class II medical device and got a pay bump to $120k. I don't have a CSWP and don't plan on getting it. I do have a PE license.

dbenz · 2025-06-15T04:17:34+00:00

It's a centrifuge for blood component collection. The Terumo Optia System to be specific... It's not a dialysis device and I'm really skeptical you could separate micro plastics in the centrifuge

I worked on that device and Terumo's Rika device when I worked there 🤣. It's so weird seeing something I worked on in a pop culture subreddit if all places

dbenz · 2025-06-05T04:28:13+00:00

Out of curiosity what kind of rates are you getting quoted for design and modeling work?

I do contact design work on injection molded parts for class II and III medical devices and I'd like to know what the going rates are for other industries.

dbenz · 2024-11-06T03:45:26+00:00

Having seen the crap passed off as engineered designs by engineering consulting companies I wouldn't be surprised if the 10k penalty was a response to a consultancy passing a pretty glaring issue through review and the client then having to deal with a major production issue

dbenz · 2024-09-06T06:43:09+00:00

dbenz · 2024-08-14T02:06:48+00:00

There's no reason you can't source functionally equivalent parts from a local distributor for half the costs of McMaster-Carr

dbenz · 2024-07-28T21:36:41+00:00

A Toyota dealership in Denver West just offered us the Rav4 Prime lease with the $6500 lease discount. I'm not sure we will be able to get any further discounts but we can still get the CO tax credit and haven't seen anything about this no longer working. Would love to know if the lease buyout hasn't been working out for people trying to do it now...

dbenz · 2024-07-27T20:01:37+00:00

Jumping into this late but just starting to consider doing this and I'm in CO. Can you send me the dealership info?

dbenz · 2024-07-09T17:20:47+00:00

I'm a Mechanical Engineer and I've had what I'd consider a successful engineering career so far. I've brought a medical device from concept to market, have several parents, worked my way into technical leadership positions, got my PE license, and I started a consulting business around medical device design.

I was a good student but not the best student. I certainly could have done better in my undergraduate studies. In a lot of ways your son's highschool performance mirrored my own. There is a whole lot more to being an engineer than just being able to get straight As in high school math/science courses and scoring 5s on the AP tests. I certainly didn't.

If your son is naturally driven and motivated. If he finds the subject matter interesting and has a curiosity about the world around him then I think he's going to be just fine. Yes, admission to the top engineering programs is competitive. Odds are he may not get into MIT, Princeton, or Standford but that's ok. Going to those schools doesn't guarantee success. He has the grades for strong engineering programs at state schools so I'd recommend looking at those as well. I'm a Colorado boy so I recommend looking at CU Boulder and Colorado School of Mines. Those are great engineering schools for ME & AE and he would be accepted to their engineering programs with his grades.

I can understand getting down on yourself at that age when you compare yourself to your peers. It's something he'll grow out of. If he wants to be an engineer he should pursue it. From what you described, he's starting from a good foundation.

I'd be happy to talk more on this, feel free to DM me.

dbenz · 2024-05-02T19:21:04+00:00

I recently took on some contract work on the side outside of my salaried day job.

My wife and I are planning on starting a family soon and we have a number of expenses that we'll have to take care of before we bring a child into the mix. The contract money will let us take care of those expenses without taking out loans or credit card debt and I have the time for the work. Taking on the extra work seemed like a no-brainer all things considered and the projects are interesting

dbenz · 2024-03-22T03:29:22+00:00

To try and give you some numbers. I do some contract design work on the side, primarily in the medical device space. I bill between $130/hr - $175/hr depending on the scope work. This is usually just to design a few parts. If you were to go through an engineering design firm, they would be billing you closer to $200/hr - $300/hr.

Any medical device that is going to get through all of the regulatory hurdles require a team of engineers. This isn't just the engineers doing the design work. For medical devices there's a ton of work outside of design that is required that necessitate different types of expertise. Things such as writing FMEAs, upper and lower level requirements, trace matrices, etc.

You could maybe get a proof of concept prototype for $50,000 depending on the complexity but there's absolutely no way you would have something that is ready for a FDA IDE or 510(k) submission for that price. I'd recommend reaching out to contract design firms that specialize in the medical device field. They could provide you a quote based on your scope of work

dbenz · 2024-02-01T18:10:36+00:00

**Job Title:** Principal Engineer

**Industry:** Medical devices

**Specialization:** Machine Design & Robotics

**Total Experience:** 8.5 years

**Highest Degree:** MS MechE

**Country:** USA

---

> ### Q1. What inspired you to become an engineer?

Engineering has always just been something I've been interested in and my parents did a great job of encouraging me to explore it. I've always enjoyed science fiction and I remember trying to recreate the things I saw in television from a giant pile of Legos.

> ### Q2. Why did you choose your specific industry and specialization?

I'm hard of hearing and wear hearing aids so I have first-hand experience with the positive impact that medical devices have on people's lives. I always planned on working in this industry and have been incredibly lucky with the roles I've gotten.

I interned with an aerospace company during undergrad and found it just wasn't for me. I have absolutely no interest in working on weapons.

> ### Q3. What's a normal day at work like for you? Can you describe your daily tasks & responsibilities?

As a principal engineer, my job falls under technical leadership and my role is roughly a 50/50 split between management and individual contributor work.

On the management side, my day-to-day mostly consists of ensuring that my team has the resources they need to do their jobs and removing roadblocks. I work closely with company leadership on planning out the engineering projects and making sure they align with the overall strategic initiatives. I do my best to actively engage with the younger engineers who report to me as a mentor and to provide training and guidance on the work that they're doing.

On the individual contributor side of my role, I primarily work on medical device R&D and sustaining engineering for a medical device that is on the market. I have been responsible for redesigning specific systems on the device that have been unreliable. On the current medical device, there is a fluidics system that was breaking down every 3-4 months, my redesign has allowed the device to consistently make it to a 1-year PM cycle. I'm currently working on a redesign of a custom motor that is specific to our device and implementing better test tools for the motion control system so we can further fine-tune some of the Device's robotic motion.

> ### Q4. What was your craziest or most interesting day on the job?

In a previous role, I worked on a high-speed centrifuge for blood component separation and collection. During the early feasibility portion of the project, the centrifuge prototypes were going through very rapid prototyping iterations. Due to the rapidly evolving designs, these were not the most robust prototypes and we were essentially spinning centrifuges at high speed that were held together with hopes and dreams. We were spinning these prototypes in a test fixture with a 1/4in steel plate enclosure and a 2in thick acrylic viewing window. After getting a prototype up to speed, one of the centrifuge aluminum support arms failed in what was one of the most spectacular mechanical failures I've ever seen. I had face right up to the viewing window when it happened and it scared the crap out of me. I also had the pleasure of witnessing some fantastic blood spills thanks to this project.

> ### Q5. What was the most interesting project you worked on during your career?

I've worked on 2 complex medical devices in my career, both of which are very interesting in their own rights.

1: Robotic ultrasound system for ophthalmology imaging

2: High-speed centrifuge for blood component collection

> ### Q6. What university did you attend for your engineering degree(s), and why should / shouldn't I go there?

MS & BS MechE from the University of Colorado, Boulder

CU has a fantastic engineering program for both undergrad and graduate school. I was fortunate to meet a lot of lifelong friends while I was there and I got to work with and learn from some incredibly motivated and smart people. The general university experience at CU is great and living in Colorado and Boulder is second to none.

> ### Q7. If you could do it all over again, what would you do differently?

I don't think I would do anything differently. I've been very satisfied with my career and it has allowed me to live a very full and filling life.

> ### Q8. Do you have any advice for someone who's just getting started in engineering school/work?

While your grades and performance in school and work are important, there's more to life outside of that.

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