Manufacturing and product development

Development engineering can offer a diverse and challenging career for people who enjoy experimentation and problem solving. The timescales tend to be shorter than in academic research, which means that you'll have the satisfaction of seeing a project through from initial concept to final production. The commercial impetus also means that greater resources are often available to meet customer demands.

Product engineers need a good technical understanding of the product and the manufacturing process, and also need to troubleshoot problems as they arise. Other skills that you'll have developed at university, such as the ability to communicate clearly and write concise reports, are also crucial in this role.

Physicists who start in product engineering can move on to a wide range of roles. You might choose to specialize in a particular technology, move into applications engineering – in which you would work closely with the customer to bid for new contracts – or you may progress to managerial roles such as team leader or project manager.

Case study: A degree of choice at Siemens
Siemens is one of the world's biggest industrial companies, employing some 430,000 staff in 190 countries. Frank-Stefan Becker looks at what physicists there actually do

Case study: A super(conducting) career
Joe Brown from Oxford Instruments explains why he is still enthusiastic about designing and manufacturing superconducting magnets after nearly 40 years in the industry