What type of experience does it take to land a FAANG job for mechanical engineers? (Product design/development, hardware testing, reliability, manufacturing, sourcing, etc.) I get that these roles are fewer in number than SW roles. For any MEs in FAANG, are primarily grad students considered? How did you differentiate yourself? How did you change industries? 1-2 YOE
You should try getting an SDET role aka testing role. It’ll get you through the door and help you build experience. It’s a dying profession but a lot of companies still do it like Expedia and Samsung.
Currently learning python and have done some basic unit testing. Is it this type of testing but on a much larger/advanced scale?
No. It’s about writing test case automation, writing test plans/specs, manual test validation and telemetry monitoring and alerting. This is how it was before we got rid of the testing role though so it could be different in other companies.
Good luck. Most of the people come from top tier schools from what I can see. -Fellow MechE
There are plenty of jobs in their data centers. But there it is more like energy system design: cooling, CFD, emergency diesel generators and HVAC
That’s mostly in line with what I’ve been seeing. Ah, the side of ME that I didn’t care too much for.
Not to worry, because the environment seems very toxic. At least in Amazon's data centers. I did the mistake to get in and now I am trying to escape. Seems like the people who stay are technicians or low educated people as they won't find that salary or title recognition elsewhere. It's like being in the army and most of the conversation you'll have would be very low level. On the top of that you will be in the middle of nowhere. Sounds like very miserable right? It is ! It's the money that lure most people into the trap.
Try for Technical PM or Ops Manager role ... have you had experience in vendor/ supplier management? Contract manufacturing? ISO 9001? Lean/ six sigma green or black belt ? These skills will get you into Apple/ Amazon manufacturing,
At Fb there are no new grad Mech Es that I know of. The managers here value candidates who have a varied industrial background with fluency in different manufacturing processes (traditional machining, plastic injection molding, composites, 3D printing, etc.) So a new grad will not fit since they want engineers who can come in and add value right away. My advice would be to work at a few different companies and jump around every 2-3 years. Work at companies that will give you a lot of good experience working on difficult problems to gain design, analysis, and manufacturing experience.
Fewer in number is an understatement... 🤣