WHAT DOES A MECHANICAL DESIGN ENGINEER DO?

Published: Jun 30, 2025 - The Mechanical Design Engineer designs and develops precision opto-mechanical components, assemblies, and packaging for ultrafast laser systems, managing all aspects from prototyping to final production with an emphasis on documentation and design standards. This role provides technical leadership within cross-functional teams, supporting product development through mechanical input, vendor collaboration, design reviews, and verification testing. The engineer demands innovative problem-solving based on sound engineering principles, with a focus on manufacturability, reliability, cost-effectiveness, and overall product quality.

A Review of Professional Skills and Functions for Mechanical Design Engineer

1. Mechanical Design Engineer Duties

  • Concept Development: Conceptual development interfacing robotics, food dispensing technology and feedback systems
  • Proposal Validation: Validate the suitability of proposals through simulated and physical trialling
  • Design Oversight: Design oversight of hygiene, usability and operational safety
  • Design Transfer: Perform Design For Manufacture and Design Transfer to Manufacture of modules, through to commissioning, installation and lifecycle analysis
  • Team Interaction: Interact cross-functionally with teams working on software stack, sensing, embedded electronics and robotics

2. Mechanical Design Engineer Details

  • Capability Evaluation: Evaluate internal technical capabilities and economic visibility related to new product /system implementation
  • Library Creation: Create a standard mechanical library that includes BOM, drawings and specifications
  • Cost Management: Development of cost reduction, cost control programs, and establishment of a standard costing system
  • Production Support: Support the production start-up and new product launching /system
  • Material Sourcing: Support the SC department in material sourcing
  • Quality Coordination: Coordinate and implement quality control objectives, activities, or procedures to resolve production problems, maximize material reliability or minimize costs
  • Mechanical Tasks: Perform any mechanical job-related activities as requested by the immediate supervisor/manager

3. Mechanical Design Engineer Responsibilities

  • Opto-Mechanical Design: Design and develop precision opto-mechanical laser platforms, assemblies, sub-assemblies, components and packaging for ultrafast laser systems
  • Design Ownership: Responsible for all mechanical designs, drawings, and revision control from prototyping to final product
  • Documentation Management: Maintain “best in class” documentation including mechanical Bills of Materials and part number information control
  • Design Review: Drive mechanical engineering design reviews
  • Team Collaboration: Perform in a distributed, diverse, cross-functional team environment
  • Product Development: Participate in product development teams as the primary mechanical design resource
  • Project Leadership: Lead projects that have a high mechanical and opto-mechanical design content
  • Status Reporting: Participate in weekly and bi-weekly status reporting to functional and project management
  • Optical Support: Facilitate optical design development by providing mechanical engineering input and support
  • Technical Leadership: Provide technical leadership in the design of opto-mechanical assemblies, molded parts, machined parts and tooling
  • Design Standards: Set design standards for the tolerancing, CAD drawing formats, and document control of CAD drawings
  • Vendor Liaison: Qualify and act as an engineering liaison to key outside vendors (machine shops, PCB houses, etc.)
  • Product Knowledge: Learn about existing products and develop technical expertise
  • Production Transfer: Act as a point of contact with Production on the transfer of new mechanical designs to manufacturing for methods, and manufacturing-specific tooling
  • Design Testing: Perform first article assembly and design verification testing
  • Product Optimization: Design and develop a product while keeping manufacturability, cost, reliability and quality in mind
  • Creative Problem-Solving: Significant emphasis on design requiring innovative, intuitive, creative problem solving based on sound mechanical principles and understanding of materials, heat flow, vibration, fluid dynamics, etc.
  • Design Validation: Support design concepts with hand calculations, FEA, etc.
  • Design Improvement: Investigate, create, and/or develop solutions that will improve design solutions or reduce cost

4. Mechanical Design Engineer Job Summary

  • Design Leadership: Lead mechanical design activities on projects and lead a design team
  • Scope Estimation: Understand the scope of work, estimate efforts, and support preparing proposals
  • Cross-Functional Collaboration: Strong collaboration skills with other internal and external team members such as industrial, manufacturing, electrical, structural, thermal, acoustic and system engineering
  • Cost Reduction: Perform VAVE (Value Analysis Value Engineering) to cost down current designs and improve manufacturability without compromising functional design intent
  • Manufacturing Alignment: Work with the manufacturing lead on projects to make sure DFM is an integral part of the design
  • Design Delivery: Deliver complete and accurate designs, documentation and BOMs for fabrication, assembly and installation that meet project requirements and comply with applicable international codes and standards
  • Quality Responsibility: Responsible for the quality of design and documentation for all team members supporting the project
  • Manufacturing Support: Provide technical guidance to internal manufacturing teams in releasing new products to Manufacturing
  • Supply Chain Interface: Interface with the supply chain in taking cost out of existing designs by recommending alternate sources or manufacturing processes without compromising customer design intent
  • Change Review: Review engineering changes and determine cost (design man-hours) to implement approved changes

5. Mechanical Design Engineer Accountabilities

  • Supplier Support: Support the contract manufacturer to meet Fortinet's quality, scheduling goals
  • DFM Review: Review the DFM issue and make a suggestion
  • Cost Control: Control component prices and take action on cost reduction
  • Design Support: Work with the design partner by supporting PCB Design from the mechanical side
  • Local Sourcing: Local sourcing for mechanical-related components
  • Issue Resolution: Analyze and resolve the design issues prototype in the field
  • System Validation: System verification and validation

6. Mechanical Design Engineer Functions

  • NPI Participation: Working within a multi-disciplinary team through all stages of the NPI process
  • Specification Review: Contributing to and reviewing product technical specifications
  • Concept Development: Develop mechanical concepts, detailed designs and analyses
  • Design Presentation: Presenting designs at relevant project reviews, both internal and with the customer
  • Design Data: Generating mechanical design data for manufacture
  • Technical Support: Providing technical support to the manufacturing, assembly and test processes
  • Report Generation: Producing design study reports and contributing technical inputs to proposals

7. Mechanical Design Engineer Job Description

  • Design Tasks: Conduct engineering and design tasks for EPC projects within the Industrial construction, Food and Beverage, and Pharmaceutical industries
  • Project Management: Manage Project Schedules and Budgets as well as provide weekly reports to communicate project status, issues, and needs
  • Bid Evaluation: Perform equipment technical bid evaluations and prepare recommendations
  • Document Review: Review equipment vendor documents for compliance with project specifications and industry standards
  • Inquiry Preparation: Prepare equipment inquiry/RFQ packages
  • P&ID Development: Develop, review, and maintain project P&IDs
  • Field Walkdowns: Perform field walk-downs to collect information to complete work

8. Mechanical Design Engineer Overview

  • Specification Development: Develop specifications for system-level, subsystem and component performance based on customer needs and product requirements
  • Design Optimization: Develop the optimal design through Computer Aided Engineering (CAE), Tradeoff Analysis, Technology Assessment, Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA)
  • Test Execution: Develop and execute test plans to validate the performance of newly developed products by utilizing design for reliability tools and performance sensitivity analysis
  • Regulatory Design: Work with Regulatory Affairs team members to design products that meet and acquire the global product approvals and certifications, such as FDA, UL, CE, CSA, NSF, and Energy Star
  • Design Improvement: Identify and implement design changes that improve user experience, quality, manufacturability, serviceability and sustainability of cold storage products

9. Mechanical Design Engineer Details and Accountabilities

  • Product Care: Mechanical product care for servo motors
  • R&D Liaison: Contact person in the R&D department for production, quality, and logistics
  • Cost Analysis: Systematic analysis of “redesign to cost”
  • Suggestion Evaluation: Analyzes and judges suggestions from the internal improvement system to continuously optimize the products and the quality
  • Process Optimization: Supports the production by optimizing processes and qualifying motor components
  • Knowledge Transfer: Coordinates or assists in the transfer of knowledge or new products between plants

10. Mechanical Design Engineer Tasks

  • Equipment Safety: Maintains the integrity and safety of the range of medical equipment with high electromechanical content
  • Design Remediation: Participates in and leads projects to remediate the design and design history for ventilator products and accessories
  • Lab Management: Manages and maintains the Engineering lab and equipment for tests and evaluations
  • Design Improvement: Designs, verifies, validates and implements product improvements brought about by changes to mechanical sub-assemblies
  • Parts Replacement: Identifies and verifies alternative parts for obsolete components
  • Lifecycle Support: Designs, develops, analyzes, troubleshoots and provides technical skills during the product lifecycle
  • Reliability Study: Designs studies and protocols to investigate specific technical questions within the field of expertise, including mechanical design and reliability
  • Design Analysis: Provides in-depth analysis and recommendations on product design and process improvements
  • Project Management: Manages projects, requiring delegation of work and review of others' work
  • Customer Communication: Communicates with senior internal and external customers and vendors
  • Design Translation: Translates discoveries into usable and marketable product design updates
  • Process Improvement: Makes improvements to processes, systems or products to enhance the performance of the job area
  • Field Support: Supports customers by troubleshooting to the root cause and resolving product issues as they arise in the field
  • Production Support: Supports plant production goals by resolving issues as they arise in production
  • Safety Compliance: Performs operations by established safe working procedures, regulations, standards and general safety rules
  • Hazard Awareness: Ensuring that attention is given to special hazards associated with the particular area of work

11. Mechanical Design Engineer Roles

  • Product Design: Design and develop electromechanical products and capital medical equipment according to specifications and regulatory requirements
  • Project Leadership: Recognized expert, managing projects or processes
  • Task Delegation: Exercises considerable latitude in determining deliverables of assignments, with limited oversight from the manager
  • Team Coaching: Coaches, reviews and delegates work with lower-level specialists
  • Component Integration: Integrate electronic components with mechanical designs
  • Design Documentation: Prepare full documentation by relevant internal SOPs, regulatory requirements and Design Control
  • Prototype Evaluation: Design, procure, assemble, and evaluate prototypes
  • Result Communication: Write engineering reports and create presentations to document and communicate results
  • Requirement Management: Generation and maintenance of product requirements
  • Test Development: Collaborate with peers to manage the development of appropriate testing to verify product meets internal and external customer requirements

12. Mechanical Design Engineer Additional Details

  • Product Delivery: Working as part of a team, be responsible for delivering parts, assemblies and systems from defined concepts to production
  • Design Practice: Use established Dyson development processes and good engineering practice to deliver robust design solutions that meet specification requirements
  • Cost Optimization: Develop designs that are refined for low-cost, high-volume manufacturing
  • Development Planning: Generate engineering development plans and report to technical management on risks, timescales and technical issues
  • Test Definition: Conduct or define lab-based testing for component and system characterisation and validation
  • Assembly Support: Work closely with prototype build technicians to define and optimise assembly processes and equipment from initial concepts to full-scale production
  • Design Validation: Optimise and validate mechanical designs using appropriate modelling, simulation and analysis tools

13. Mechanical Design Engineer Essential Functions

  • Drawing Delivery: Delivery of mechanical drawings and other relevant technical details to address requests for early submittal of load bank technical documentation
  • Requirements Evaluation: Evaluate customer order requirements to determine and deliver a mechanical design package to meet those requirements
  • Technical Advising: Advise on technical matters arising from Sales enquiries
  • Design Specification: Provide mechanical design specifications and/or BOMs to enable procurement and order processing by the supply chain and manufacturing function
  • Drawing Provision: Providing detailed drawings to enable the supply and manufacture of all mechanical components and associated assemblies
  • Documentation Provision: Provision of mechanical design documentation, schedules and programmes to enable and achieve economic production of customer orders
  • Process Improvement: Identify opportunities for improvements to the product and/or associated processes for designing, developing and manufacturing the product
  • Leadership Support: Provide technical leadership and/or support to enable the design
  • Product Development: Develop and implement product improvement opportunities including working with offshore teams or other 3rd parties in the execution of such work
  • Safety Compliance: Ensure that product safety and compliance with relevant codes and standards are implemented and maintained
  • Quality Support: Technical support and advice on matters concerning product quality, performance and application, including the review and provision of relevant documentation
  • Standards Monitoring: Stay abreast and advise on matters concerning Product Safety and relevant Compliance standards

14. Mechanical Design Engineer Role Purpose

  • Product Development: Research, analyze, design, and develop new products
  • Prototype Design: Design, model, and test prototypes for the products
  • Simulation Setup: Set up and run laboratory simulations
  • Testing Procedures: Establish testing procedures, conduct field tests, document results, and develop leadership/customer presentations
  • Technical Reviews: Conduct and participate in technical reviews of requirements, specifications, designs, etc.
  • Manufacturing Support: Construct and assist technicians in the manufacturing of developed products
  • Vendor Interface: Interface with outside vendors for component selection, manufacturing, and assembly
  • Risk Evaluation: Evaluate engineering approaches and risks to produce and iterate development plans

15. Junior Mechanical Design Engineer General Responsibilities

  • 3D Modeling: Developing 3D mechanical design data with an understanding of customer requirements and product performance characteristics
  • Design Execution: Execute the design, analysis, or evaluation of projects using sound engineering principles and adhering to business standards, practices, procedures, and product/program requirements
  • Concept Development: Determining the production techniques and design concept to meet business objectives
  • Discipline Knowledge: Developing conceptual knowledge of a professional discipline
  • Technical Support: Support roles with specialized expertise or technical knowledge in a broad area
  • Business Acumen: Applies general knowledge of business developed through education or experience
  • Team Contribution: Understands how the work of their team contributes to the area
  • Issue Resolution: Resolves issues using established procedures
  • Team Consultation: Consults supervisor or more senior team members for issues outside of defined instructions/parameters
  • Cross Collaboration: Collaborates with others to solve issues
  • Customer Relations: Develops strong customer relationships and serves as the interface between the customer and GE
  • Information Exchange: Exchanges technical information, asks questions and checks for understanding
  • Standards Compliance: Ensure the design is by the company and industry standards and processes
Relevant Information
What Does A Mechanical Engineer Do?