test engineering jobs harder to find?

[nyc_(is_out_of_here)]

Wages seems to be stagnant.

And jobs less plentiful.

Yet, I see plenty of jobs in India and newbies from India and China asking for help on the LabVIEW board.

[crossrulz]

Can't say much about wages, but there seem to be plenty of test engineering positions around the Cincinnati area.  Granted, one of those companies that is hiring has seen a lot of people leave lately (I left there about 3.5 years ago).

[jcarmody]

My company can't find Test Engineers.  It got so hard that they stopped looking...

[thoult]

We've got at least two positions open in my team, and we have enough work to mean that once we fill one we'll open another requisition.

The main problem that we face is that ideal hires are both good LV developers and all-round engineers who can pick up product and process knowledge. The latter is hard to judge from a CV, but an interview usually gives you a good idea. Looking for the former, we have a couple of options:

- Look for known developers from within the community

- Take on former NI engineers, as you know they're going to have a certain experience set

- Insist on a minimum of a CLD

- Extensive code based interviewing

It's rare that you're guaranteed to get the best of both worlds in the same person, but those are the ones you want if you're looking for test/process engineers.

[Hooovahh]

So your mileage may vary of course, but for me there are plenty of good jobs to choose from in my area (South East Michigan).  About 9 months ago or so I wanted to leave Magna, where I had been for 3 years.  I had a recruiter find me, and I interviewed at two other places.  I got three good offers, and an offer to stay.  I ended up picking one of the places and worked there for 6 months before I realized the job and office environment wasn't quite what I expected from the interview.  Around that time I was contacted by Samsung.  I got an interview and got an offer.  Out of curiosity I went back online and looked at the two other places I didn't take 6 months earlier, and their job postings were both still open.  All 5 places in this story were for test engineers in several fields, all positions were for LabVIEW programming.  Now I'm at a job where I have a great boss, good co-workers, steady work, and a hands on environment where we can invest in ourselves with process improvements.

[BowenM]

We also have had a couple of test engineer type positions open for almost a year.  We have had a hard time filling them for the exact reasons that thoult listed.  It seems difficult to find the right combination of real LabVIEW ability and the ability to pick up and learn what is expected of an engineer. Unfortunately, LabVIEW coding seems to span the weird gap between needing some actual CS type understanding and experience combined with the need to understand electricity, electronics, signal processing, etc.

If you are having a hard time finding a position you may want to search for something other than "Test Engineer" and "LabVIEW" as these terms sometimes don't make the actual application. Search for instrumentation, data acquisition, machine control, National Instruments...  several of the applications I've seen use odd phrases but are clearly looking for test engineers.  My current position for example was listed originally as "Data Acquisition Engineer" and said nothing about either LabVIEW or NI. It talked lots about some old Unix / Linux system they had and C programming - but after reading the application it was clear they were just looking for someone to upgrade and maintain some old software / hardware and had put those keywords down because it is what they knew.

[PaulG.]

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@Hooovahh wrote:

So your mileage may vary of course, but for me there are plenty of good jobs to choose from in my area (South East Michigan).  About 9 months ago or so I wanted to leave Magna, where I had been for 3 years.  I had a recruiter find me, and I interviewed at two other places.  I got three good offers, and an offer to stay.  I ended up picking one of the places and worked there for 6 months before I realized the job and office environment wasn't quite what I expected from the interview.  Around that time I was contacted by Samsung.  I got an interview and got an offer.  Out of curiosity I went back online and looked at the two other places I didn't take 6 months earlier, and their job postings were both still open.  All 5 places in this story were for test engineers in several fields, all positions were for LabVIEW programming.  Now I'm at a job where I have a great boss, good co-workers, steady work, and a hands on environment where we can invest in ourselves with process improvements.

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I'm in the same geographic area and my experience is about the same. I can say that many of the jobs that seem to be always open are jobs that have very high turnover and/or jobs nobody wants. I've interviewed for a number of these positions and most of the time I'm the one who says "thanks but no thanks." A year later I might browse Monster again and these positions (or similar positions at the same company) are still open. Many of these places are cheap, expect too much travel or politically toxic. I've heard (and experienced many of my own) horror stories. Thankful to be where I am now. 

[Hooovahh]

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@PaulG. wrote:

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Many of these places are cheap, expect too much travel or politically toxic. I've heard (and experienced many of my own) horror stories. Thankful to be where I am now.  

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For the record none of the places I turned down, were because I thought they were toxic, political, or had too much travel.  Honestly I could see myself working at anyone of them, it wasn't a matter of "Will I regret this move" but more of a "Which will I enjoy the most", and for me that was Samsung.  For someone else it could very well be one of the others.

[Ray.R]

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@BowenM wrote:

We also have had a couple of test engineer type positions open for almost a year.  We have had a hard time filling them for the exact reasons that thoult listed.  It seems difficult to find the right combination of real LabVIEW ability and the ability to pick up and learn what is expected of an engineer. Unfortunately, LabVIEW coding seems to span the weird gap between needing some actual CS type understanding and experience combined with the need to understand electricity, electronics, signal processing, etc.

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Hi Bowen,

If you guys need extra help that can be farmed out, we may be able to help.   We have the experience that you described.

Plus you can ask other LabVIEW Champions for references.  🙂  We have done work with some of them.

Cheers!

RayR

[BowenM]

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@Ray.R wrote:

Hi Bowen,

If you guys need extra help that can be farmed out, we may be able to help.   We have the experience that you described.

Plus you can ask other LabVIEW Champions for references.  🙂  We have done work with some of them.

Cheers!

RayR

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Sadly we are not looking for specific "contract" type work.  We need someone active and there to troubleshoot, fix DAQ issues, transducers, maintain / update code, etc etc.  Thanks for thinking of us though 🙂