How To Become A Technical Design Engineer: What It Is and Career Path

What is a technical design engineer and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

Quoted expert

Amir Riaz Ph.D.

You will mainly be designing the products and systems of the company as a Technical Design Engineer. You will also perform research and analysis, identify and understand the projects' needs, and develop test structures and prototypes, among others, while ensuring efficiency and quality.

As a Technical Design Engineer, you need to have great listening skills. In order to know and understand the needs of the clients, you should know how to listen. You also need to have mechanical skills because you will be dealing with different types of machinery as a Technical Design Engineer. You should know how to work with and use them. Lastly is problem-solving skills. Problems will arise, and you should know how to deal with them in the most efficient manner.

As a Technical Design Engineer, you can earn an average salary of $68,915 per year with a 4% job growth rate. You can also explore other roles and further your career. You can be an Engineering Technician, an Engineer, an Engineering Manager, and a Vice President of Engineering.

What general advice would you give to a technical design engineer?

Amir Riaz Ph.D.

Associate Professor, University of Maryland - College Park

Many of the skills that you developed during the course of your Bachelors degree are fundamental, such as self learning, teamwork, engineering approach to practical problems. These you will continue to develop further as you progress in your career. Looking to the future, learn coding and engineering softwares, e.g. ANSYS, pay attention to machine learning and additive manufacturing.

ScoreTechnical Design EngineerUS Average

Salary

5.9

Avg. Salary $75,599

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

7.4

Growth rate 2%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

6.4

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.11%

Asian 10.33%

Black or African American 3.39%

Hispanic or Latino 9.27%

Unknown 4.59%

White 72.30%

Gender

female 16.26%

male 83.74%

Age - 39

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 - 39

Stress level

7.4

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

8.6

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

5.1

Work life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a technical design engineer

Explore technical design engineer education requirements

Most common technical design engineer degrees

Bachelor's

48.1 %

Associate

39.1 %

Master's

5.0 %

Start to develop specific technical design engineer skills

Skills	Percentages
Design Drawings	12.85%
Windows	10.99%
Infrastructure	7.50%
GIS	4.69%
Control Systems	4.44%

Complete relevant technical design engineer training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 1-2 years on post-employment, on-the-job training. New technical design engineers 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 technical design engineer based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real technical design engineer resumes.

Research technical design engineer duties and responsibilities

Implement safety and quality standards to attain the ISO certification.
Used Solidworks to design test and production assembly fixtures.
Render images for the web site and trade show display in SolidWorks.
Work are performed to the ANSI Y14.5 geometric dimensioning and tolerance standard.

Prepare your technical design engineer resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your technical design engineer 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 technical design engineer resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable technical design engineer resume templates

Build a professional technical design engineer resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your technical design engineer resume.

Apply for technical design engineer jobs

Now it's time to start searching for a technical design engineer job. Consider the tips below for a successful job search:

Browse job boards for relevant postings
Consult your professional network
Reach out to companies you're interested in working for directly
Watch out for job scams

How do technical design engineers rate their job?

-/5

5 stars

4 stars

3 stars

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1 star

Technical design engineer reviews

A zippia user wrote a review on Oct 2023

Pros

It can gurantee you a good salary and if you are creative you can do many things.

Cons

you have to be creative.

A zippia user wrote a review on Jun 2019