Career advice.  Recent grad, application engineer?

BS EE graduate, May 2013 from well-known Atlanta-area engineering school. Decent GPA (2.98) and I had an internship (a help desk type role, was EE related) but I'm still not sure what I want to do with my future as far as developing a career. I currently have a contract position contributing to aerospace design but that's up in December.

I have interest and capability in design but I don't see myself in a lab all day. There is a lot to learn about product marketing, product management, the business side of electronics I guess. I consider myself to be a "people person" so I know I could work well on the business side.

Is an Application Engineer position or career a good path to pursue? I saw a company in the area is hiring, Murata Electronics and it looks like it's good for someone who just graduated.

I have talked to Career Services in the past and I wanted to get some real-world perspective.

Being a "people person" is definitely a help as an App Engineer (and in general!), since you'll be interacting with many different engineers and managers in many different roles and helping them solve their problems. You will be climbing a steep learning curve pretty much every day for a long while, which can be exhilerating or enervating, depending on your interests. One of the advantages in being an App Engineer is that you will see LOTS of different companies, projects, processes, etc., and this will help you choose where you want to go next. You'll have lab time, lots of travel (mostly local), paperwork, meetings, and all the other stuff that engineers do every day. So it's probably a very good place to start. Good luck!

Thanks for the info. It sounds like something I would be really interested in, especially what you described about learning different projects and processes with other companies.

Going to get my resume together and apply.

Oops - meant to respond 4 days ago, but then ran into problems with my email provider.

Anyway, I was once a tech in a design group for the now defunct National Semiconductor Corp., but there were cubicles full of application engineers nearby and I got to know many of them.

Their work seemed like it had a good balance - they could be techie one day and go visit customers the next. So you have the right idea of what the job would be like.

But one warning: over the years I've gotten the strong impression that some companies take application engineering very seriously, and others ... don't. Some are like, "Oh, we should have some application engineers too, go find some warm bodies to hire." Said warm bodies end up being under-supported and rarely listened to.

So research carefully whoever you interview with so you can avoid getting frustrated in your career.

Good luck!