Jobs in Engineering Analysis hard to find.

[jasc15]

I am a mechanical engineer currently working in design at a semiconductor/data-storage process equipment company. I've come to learn that I am better at analysis than i am at design. I like using and gathering data and developing specifications, whereas mechanical design requires a kind of artistic creativity that I am not very consistent with.

Now I've been looking at jobs for quite some time now, and notice that about half of what i come across are for project engineer/manager (snore), or mechanical designer (not mechanical engineer). Where are the analytical jobs? Are analytical engineers such a small elite group, that they are hand picked rather than interviewed? Is it not the sort of position for which to have a full time dedicated engineer? Is this an extreme example of the "it's who you know" principle?

[Vanadium 50]

I think it's more likely that there are few jobs that do analytical work and nothing else. It's also likely that even for those positions, the company would prefer to hire someone who does analytical work and nothing else. Tasks change.

You are probably more likely to find a position for an engineer that has a large analytical component than one that is exclusively such and advertised as exclusively such.

[kote]

As a mechanical engineering major I almost ended up in the failure analysis group at a jet engine manufacturer. You may want to look at things like that. You may want to look outside of engineering departments as well at six sigma / business process types jobs. It may take some operations experience before you can get into that though. Six sigma is all about statistical analysis, improvement, and control of processes.

[Saladsamurai]

If you can get into doing CFD or FEA I am sure you could find an analytical position. Some places have people who mostly just run simulations and the like as well as do data mining/exploiting.

[Vanadium 50]

But while FEA is a huge industry, and there are many people who do only FEA, have you ever heard of an opening to do only FEA? All the ads I've seen (and written) want someone who they could move to doing something else if they had to.

[Saladsamurai]

I work for a company that sells data center cooling solutions. The ME team here is small, but all we do is CFD. We also try to come up with alternative ways to model the physics of a data center that are more time-efficient than CFD. So basically all that we do is analysis, in some form or another.

Maybe it's a niche and my team is less representative of the CFD field as a whole.