How To Become A Design Engineering Manager: What It Is and Career Path

What is a design engineering manager and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

As a Design Engineering Manager, you will oversee engineering projects and manage a team composed of several design engineers to ensure smooth workflow and efficiency. You will ensure that you are working within the given budget and timeline as you also set guidelines, goals and organize schedules.

As a Design Engineering Manager, you need to also have special skills and traits. Analytical skills, communication skills, and being detail-oriented are needed in this line of work. You will be dealing with a lot of information and data as a Design Engineering Manager, so you need to know how to filter these pieces of information and how to present them to the clients.

You can earn around $118,485 per year on average as a Design Engineering Manager. You can also further your career when you start as a Design Engineering Manager. For instance, you can become an Engineering Manager, a Plant Manager, and a Plant General Manager depending on the career path you plan to pursue.

ScoreDesign Engineering ManagerUS Average

Salary

8.7

Avg. Salary $143,603

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

7.4

Growth rate 2%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

1.6

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.16%

Asian 12.14%

Black or African American 3.09%

Hispanic or Latino 8.82%

Unknown 4.67%

White 71.12%

Gender

female 8.12%

male 91.88%

Age - 48

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 48

Stress level

7.4

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

10.0

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

3.5

Work life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a design engineering manager

Explore design engineering manager education requirements

Most common design engineering manager degrees

Bachelor's

67.0 %

Associate

15.4 %

Master's

13.0 %

Start to develop specific design engineering manager skills

Skills	Percentages
CAD	10.20%
Project Management	7.99%
Aided Design	6.07%
Solidworks	5.64%
Continuous Improvement	5.12%

Complete relevant design engineering manager training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 6-12 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New design engineering managers learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a design engineering manager based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real design engineering manager resumes.

Research design engineering manager duties and responsibilities

Manage all inside and outside tooling and design work, programming of the CNC turret presses and laser cutting equipment.
Manage QA for research orient development efforts and for high visibility, production focuse development efforts tie to revenue generation.
Perform analysis including amplifier RF loop budgets and are a key contributor to the RF architecture.
Introduce SolidWorks for equipment design, component analysis, customer presentation, and photo rendering of products for marketing purposes.

Prepare your design engineering manager resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your design engineering manager resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a design engineering manager resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

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