What Type of Jobs Can Engineers Get in the Pharma Industry?

The majority of roles for mechanical engineers tend to be in:

• plant, maintenance or facility engineering roles both within pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturing
• design engineering roles within medical device manufacturing and engineering consultancies

Depending on your experience, you are probably going to need some retraining, especially for plant engineering or maintenance type roles. For more design engineering focused roles, your current qualifications may be enough especially if you are a strong candidate and the labour market is tight.

Another option would be to retrain for validation roles as your background in engineering design, plant engineering, fluid dynamics and even thermodynamics are all relevant to this field.

So as a mechanical engineer, you’d have roughly 3 broad options.

Option 1

Apply for mechanical design engineer roles as you are with engineering consultancies or med device or pharma companies.

Polish up your CV/Resume and apply as you are. You could apply for advertised positions or you could send out speculative job applications.

For a list of pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers and 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 or med device sector.

You might consider bolstering your qualifications by taking our 5-week GMPs Training for Beginners Course to learn about the Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs) and the risk management techniques used in the FDA regulated manufacturing environment.

Option 2

Retrain for plant, maintenance or facility engineer roles in pharmaceutical companies.

Pharma needs purified water and clean air systems to manufacture safe medicines that are used for injections. These aseptic processes have to be designed, validated, monitored, maintained and updated in FDA-regulated manufacturing facilities.

Here, you will take our 15-week Conversion Course into Engineering Roles in Pharma to learn GMPs and how safe medicines are made in a regulated environment. You will also 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.

Typical roles and the expected salaries:

• Facilities Engineer

Some companies might call this role:

• • Maintenance Engineer
  • Plant Engineer

• Maintenance Technician

View Salaries

Options for further study

Then take our 10-Week  Validation Training Course – For Starter Validation Roles – to learn more about how these systems are validated.

Finally, take our Computer System Validation Course to learn about the management of the electronic data produced by the control systems used to generate and distribute clean air and purified water. This will round out your qualifications and give yourself a competitive edge in the marketplace.

Option 3

Retrain for validation roles in both pharmaceutical companies and engineering consultancies. 

Take our 15-week Equipment 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 IQ OQ PQ 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 –  you work directly for a pharmaceutical company on ongoing projects.
• Validation Team Member – you work with an engineering consultancy firm on capital projects.

(Note that actual job titles may vary – the distinction is more between who’d employ you and what type of projects you’d work on).

View Salaries

Options for further study

Take our 30-week online Certificate in Validation program for Senior Pharmaceutical Validation Roles to get a level 7 university qualification from Technological University Dublin, Ireland and a more interesting job with a higher salary such as;

• Validation Engineer

Some companies might call this role: 

• Validation Specialist
• CQV Specialist
• C&Q Specialist

Finally, take our Computer System Validation Course and extend your role to CSV Projects. Round out your qualifications and give yourself a competitive edge in the marketplace.

The majority of roles for mechanical facilities, maintenance or plant engineer in pharma tend to be in: 

• plant, maintenance or facility engineering roles both within pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturing 
• maintenance and design roles with engineering consultancies 

GMP manufacturing experience or some  relevant qualification is generally required but you may well get hired without this especially if the labour market is tight and you are a strong candidate.

Another option would be to retrain for validation roles as your background in engineering design and interpreting P&ID technical drawings are highly relevant to this field. 

You would have roughly 3 broad options to bolster your qualifications. 

Option 1

Apply for maintenance roles with engineering consultancies, pharma or med device manufacturing companies

Polish up your CV/Resume and apply as you are. You could apply for advertised positions or you could send out speculative job applications. 

For a list of pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers and 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. 

You could consider taking our GMP Training for Beginners program to bolster your qualifications. 

Option 2

Retrain for plant engineering or facility or maintenance engineer roles in pharmaceutical or med device companies.

Pharma needs purified water and clean air systems to manufacture safe medicines which are used for injections. These aseptic processes have to be designed, validated, monitored, maintained and updated in FDA regulated manufacturing facilities. 

Here, you’d need to take the following programs

Take our 15-week online Conversion Course into Engineering Roles in Pharma to learn GMPs and how safe medicines are made in a regulated environment. You will also 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.

Then take our 10-Week Online Starter Validation program to learn how those systems are validated. 

Option 3

Retrain for validation roles in both pharmaceutical companies and engineering consultancies. 

Take our 15-week online Starter Validation program and learn to populate an IQ OQ PQ Validation Protocol. 

IQ OQ PQ Validation Protocols form a crucial part of pharmaceutical plant projects and having a fundamental understanding of how these protocols are put together and interpreted is a fundamental skillset of any engineer cross-training to work in this area. 

Typical roles:

• Validation Technician –  you work directly for a pharmaceutical company on ongoing projects.
• Validation Team Member – you work with an engineering consultancy firm on capital projects.

(Note that actual job titles may vary – the distinction is more between who’d employ you and what type of projects you’d work on).

As an aircraft maintenance engineer, you could consider applying for maintenance or plant engineering roles within the pharmaceutical or medical device manufacturing sector. Engineering consultancies could also be another option.

You are going to need to take a course in GMPs and the air, steam and water systems used within the pharmaceutical industry to make safe medicines.  

Another option would be to retrain for validation roles as your background in engineering design and interpreting technical drawings are highly relevant to this field. 

You would have roughly 2 broad options to bolster your qualifications. 

Option 1

Retrain for maintenance engineering or facility engineer roles in pharmaceutical companies

Pharma needs purified water and clean air systems to manufacture safe medicines which are used for injections. These aseptic processes have to be designed, validated, monitored, maintained and updated in FDA regulated manufacturing facilities. 

Here, you’d need to take the following programs

Take our 15-week online Conversion Course into Engineering Roles in Pharma to learn GMPs and how safe medicines are made in a regulated environment. You will also 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.

Then take our 10-Week Online Starter Validation program to learn how those systems are validated. 

Option 2

Retrain for validation roles in both pharmaceutical companies and engineering consultancies. 

Take our 15-week online Starter Validation program and learn to populate an IQ OQ PQ Validation Protocol. 

IQ OQ PQ Validation Protocols form a crucial part of pharmaceutical plant projects and having a fundamental understanding of how these protocols are put together and interpreted is a fundamental skillset of any petroleum engineer cross-training to work in this area.

Production, manufacturing and industrial engineers bring a lot of strengths to this sector especially those with a strong background in the application of Lean Manufacturing principles. 

The majority of roles tend to be in: 

• medical device manufacturing as there is a much broader use of discrete manufacturing
• engineering consultancies also hire manufacturing production engineers into process optimisation consultancy roles

Pharmaceutical and biopharmaceutical manufacturing will also have roles but the majority (but not all) tend to be concentrated around packaging operations (Think running a highly automated packaging line).

Another option would be to retrain for validation roles as your background in engineering design and interpreting technical drawings are relevant to this field. 

For most roles though, you are probably going to need some retraining, especially in GMPs and risk management techniques.

So you would have roughly 2 broad options.

Option 1

Retrain for production/manufacturing roles within a GMP regulated manufacturing environment such a medical device or pharmaceutical manufacturing.

Take our 15-week online Conversion Course into Engineering Roles in Pharma to learn GMPs and how safe medicines and medical devices are made in a regulated environment. You will also learn the air, water and steam systems that underpin medical device manufacturing.

Option 2

Retrain for validation roles for both pharmaceutical companies and engineering consultancies. 

Take our Validation Training Course – For Starter Validation Roles  and retrain for the following roles:

• Validation Technician –  you work directly for a pharmaceutical company on ongoing projects. 
• Validation Team Member – you work with an engineering consultancy firm on capital projects.

View Salaries

(Note that actual job titles may vary – the distinction is more between who’d employ you and what type of projects you’d work on).

Options for further study

Take our 30-week online Certificate in Validation program for Senior Validation Roles to get a level 7 university qualification from Technological University Dublin, Ireland and a more interesting job with a higher salary such as;

• Validation Engineer

Some companies might call this role: 

• Validation Specialist
• CQV Specialist
• C&Q Specialist

Take our Computer System Validation Course and extend your role to CSV Projects. Round out your qualifications and give yourself a competitive edge in the marketplace.

The majority of quality assurance or quality control roles for those with an engineering background will be in medical device manufacturing as there is a much broader use of discrete manufacturing. Pharmaceutical and biopharma may have a few roles but the majority (but not all) tend to be concentrated around packaging operations. 

If you came into quality from a mechanical engineering or plant engineering background, you could also look at environmental quality roles.  Pharma needs purified water and clean air systems to manufacture safe medicines which are used for injections and part of your job would be to maintain and ensure the quality of the output of these systems. 

NOTE: The majority of Quality Control roles in pharmaceutical manufacturing (and food processing) involve laboratory testing and for that reason, the majority of QC roles in the pharma sector tend to be filled by those with a lab/science background, not engineering/manufacturing backgrounds. 

You would have roughly 2 broad options.

Option 1

Retrain for production quality roles within a GMP regulated medical device manufacturing environment.

Take our 15-week online Conversion Course into Engineering Roles in Pharma to learn GMPs and how safe medicines and medical devices are made in a regulated environment. You will also learn the air, water and steam systems that underpin medical device manufacturing. 

Option 2

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