What Kind of Jobs Can Electrical Engineers Get in the Pharmaceutical and Medical Device Industry?
By: Donagh Fitzgerald B.Prod Eng and Gerry Creaner B.Chem Eng. Last Updated: October 2023
As an electrical engineer, coming from outside this sector, your main opportunities would be:
- working on capital projects with engineering consultancies that focus on the pharmaceutical and medical device sectors.
- electrical maintenance roles with pharmaceutical or medical device manufacturing companies.
Another option would be to retrain for validation roles in the pharma industry or engineering consultancies as your background in engineering design and interpreting technical drawings are relevant to this field.
Apart from “Electrical Engineer” or “Senior Electrical Engineer”, here are some of the more common job titles we see advertised.
- Electrical Design Engineer
- Electrical & Instrumentation Engineer
- Senior Electrical & Instrumentation Engineer (E&I)
- Electrical & Instrumentation Engineer
So you’d have 3 broad options to both bolster your qualification or areas to retrain into.
Option 1
Apply for electrical engineering roles with engineering consultancies that work in this sector.
For a list of pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers focused on engineering consultancies, click here if you are in Ireland and here if you are in the United Kingdom. For other locations, do a search for engineering consultancies for the pharma of med device sector.
To bolster your application, take our 18-week online Conversion Course into Engineering Roles in Pharma to learn GMPs and how safe medicines are made in a regulated environment and learn the air, water and steam systems that underpin aseptic/sterile processing.
You will receive a strong grounding in the modern pharmaceutical science and engineering concepts of the environmental controls (air) and clean utility systems design that underpin an aseptic manufacturing facility and the quality systems.
Option 2
Apply for electrical maintenance engineering roles with pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturing companies
For a list of pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers, click here if you are in Ireland and here if you are in the United Kingdom. For other locations, do a search for the pharma of med device companies.
Again, to bolster your application, you could take our 18-week online Conversion Course into Engineering Roles in Pharma to learn GMPs and how safe medicines are made in a regulated environment and learn the air, water and steam systems that underpin aseptic/sterile processing.
You will receive a strong grounding in the modern pharmaceutical science and engineering concepts of the environmental controls (air) and clean utility systems design that underpin an aseptic manufacturing facility and the quality systems.
Option 3
Retrain for validation roles in both pharmaceutical companies and engineering consultancies.
ake our 15-week Validation Training Course – For Starter Validation Roles
This course explains the documentation used to specify and install new equipment systems in a manufacturing facility – and how to develop the test protocols, generally referred to as Installation Qualification (IQ), Operational Qualification (OQ) and Performance Qualification (PQ).
As the final assessment, you will learn to complete an IOQ validation protocol for a clean-in-place system.
Typical roles:
- Validation Technician – Some pharma companies call this role:
- Associate QA Validation Specialist
- Equipment Validation Specialist
- QA Validation Associate
- QA Validation Specialist
- CQV Specialist – Some pharma companies call this role:
- CQV Junior Engineer
- C&Q Specialist
- C&Q Junior Project Manager
With validation, CQV and C&Q roles, you could work directly for:
- pharmaceutical companies on in-house projects
- engineering consultancies as part of a project team on small to large capital projects
- engineering contractors as part of a project team on small to large capital projects
About the Author
Donagh Fitzgerald
Head of Marketing & Product Development
Mechanical/Production Engineer
Donagh looks after the marketing and product development including the training and pedagogical elements of our programs and makes sure that all GetReskilled’s users can have a great online learning experience. Donagh has lived and worked in many countries including Ireland, America, the UK, Singapore, Hong Kong and Japan. Donagh has also served as the Program Manager for the Farmleigh Fellowship based out of Singapore.
Donagh holds Degrees in Production Engineering and Mechanical Engineering from South East Technological University, Ireland.
Gerry Creaner
President
Senior Lecturer with GetReskilled
Gerry Creaner has over 30-years of experience in the Life Sciences Manufacturing industry across a range of technical, managerial and business roles. He established a very successful engineering consultancy prior to founding GetReskilled, an online education and learning business, with offices in Singapore, Ireland and Boston (USA), focussed on the manufacture of safe and effective medicines for the public.
He is also a founding Director of two Singapore based philanthropic organizations, the Farmleigh Fellowship and the Singapore-Ireland Fund, both of which deepen the well established and historical Singapore – Ireland relationship and deliver long-term benefits to both countries.
Gerry has an undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering (UCD, 1980) and an MSc (Management) from Trinity College Dublin (2003) and is currently doing research for his Ph.D.