I’m a PhD in Materials/Mechanical engineering, currently a “process engineer” (aka 24/7 slave) with Intel in Portland. This was my first real job. Now 2 YOE, $130k TC. I want to leave Intel but stay in Portland for personal reasons. Unfortunately, I’m only finding positions that I’m either overqualified for (I’m talking 1/2 my current TC), or underqualied for. What are some companies in the Portland area that hire early career ex-Intel PhDs? I’ve known plenty of my co-workers leaving Intel, but they’ve all relocated for new job. Willing to take a pay cut, but trying to not to lose too much.
I feel you. I’m device engineer and luckily got the job with a BS degree and am miserable. I’d rather do something else than to become a process engineer. I have 4 years of experience but honesty speaking, consider something else is probably better in the long run. Maybe you should do data science or something similar. I’m sure life will be harder later on as a process engineer with the cost cuts, consolidation
How are you under qualified with a PhD?
Ok, more like wrongly-qualified. I.e., I see positions in software or electrical engineering, which I’m not experienced in
Why do you want to leave Intel if you don't mind sharing. Doesn't seem like a compensation issue here
Yep, it’s a work-life balance thing. I’m a hard-worker, but they push it to the limit. On-call 24/7
I feel you. I'm from pdx and want to move back but the job market there is generally trash
You only have 2yoe so it wouldn't be unreasonable for you to pivot and move up the stack. It really depends on if you want to continue being a process engineer. I doubt any foundry would provide significantly better work life balance.
If you are good at coding, would recommend moving into SW roles.. other than that, you wont get anything in pdx..
Maybe look at other semiconductor related roles, like Lam, ASML, Nikon..
Just curious how this ended up working out for you? My partner has experience as a process engineer but hasn't been able to find work after leaving his last job for us to move to Portland 6 months ago. He's considering relocating away from Portland or transitioning to a new role... It's been super hard to find anything here which was a bit surprising.
Hey just saw this comment... It hasn’t worked out yet, I’m still searching. I’m also finding it surprising how hard it is to find anything. Lately, I’ve been trying really hard to find something at Nike, and it seems you work there? In what role? Any advice getting my resume noticed there?
Yeah it seems like a really tough area for process or mechanical work. We are considering looking into relocating again at this point since my partner has had such a tough time finding work, and from meetups he's been to it's seems like that's the norm. I do work at Nike as a software engineer contractor. Most of Nike hires through contracts so talking to third party recruiters is probably your best bet. I'm honestly not even sure at this point if anyone even checks the Nike careers site as I've never heard of anyone being hired through there.
I am in the same boat :( Try FEI ( Thermo Fischer Scientific)
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65k is mostly minimum wage bro.
Exactly. But I’m actually seeing other Process Engineering positions in the 65-80k range... Is Intel the only high-paying Engineering Company in Portland? I’m not a software guy