What Does a Quality Engineer Do?

Some of the skills we found on quality engineer resumes included “corrective action,” “continuous improvement,” and “iso.” We have detailed the most important quality engineer responsibilities below.

  • Creativity can be considered to be the most important personality trait for a quality engineer to have. According to a quality engineer resume, “industrial engineers use creativity and ingenuity to design new production processes in many kinds of settings in order to reduce the use of material resources, time, or labor while accomplishing the same goal.” Quality engineers are able to use creativity in the following example we gathered from a resume: “developed and maintain quality system related to the areas of manufacturing, incoming inspection, customer complaint investigations and inventory status. “
  • Another trait important for fulfilling quality engineer duties is listening skills. According to a quality engineer resume, “these engineers often operate in teams, but they also must solicit feedback from customers, vendors, and production staff.” Here’s an example of how quality engineers are able to utilize listening skills: “communicated directly with fda and iso regarding field corrections and removals and responses to audit findings. “
  • Problem-solving skills is also an important skill for quality engineers to have. This example of how quality engineers use this skill comes from a quality engineer resume, “in designing facilities for manufacturing and processes for providing services, these engineers deal with several issues at once, from workers’ safety to quality assurance.” Read this excerpt from a resume to understand how vital it is to their everyday roles and responsibilities, “documented, investigated, and resolved customer complaints in siebel per fda quality system regulations and department procedures. “
  • In order for certain quality engineer responsibilities to be completed, the job requires the skill “speaking skills.” According to a quality engineer resume, “industrial engineers sometimes have to explain their instructions to production staff or technicians before they can make written instructions available” As an example, this snippet was taken directly from a resume about how this skill applies: “addressed fda response letters concerning validating and acceptance criteria for attaching the mcs. “
  • As part of the quality engineer description, you might find that one of the skills that might be helpful to the job is “writing skills.” A quality engineer resume included this snippet: “industrial engineers must prepare documentation for other engineers or scientists, or for future reference” This skill could be useful in this scenario: “demonstrated regulatory knowledge through writing effective fda and moh responses. “
  • While “math skills” is listed last on this skills list, don’t underestimate its importance to quality engineer responsibilities. The skill is described by this resume snippet, “industrial engineers use the principles of calculus, trigonometry, and other advanced topics in mathematics for analysis, design, and troubleshooting in their work.” Here is an example of how this skill is used, “participated in defect reduction teams as consultant for quality tools, doe, statistics. “
  • See the full list of quality engineer skills.

    After discovering the most helpful skills, we moved onto what kind of education might be helpful in becoming a quality engineer. We found that 70.3% of quality engineers have graduated with a bachelor’s degree and 12.7% of people in this position have earned their master’s degrees. While most quality engineers have a college degree, you may find it’s also true that generally it’s possible to be successful in this career with only a high school degree. In fact, our research shows that one out of every eight quality engineers were not college graduates.

    Those quality engineers who do attend college, typically earn either mechanical engineering degrees or business degrees. Less commonly earned degrees for quality engineers include electrical engineering degrees or industrial engineering degrees.

    Once you’ve obtained the level of education you’re comfortable with, you might start applying to companies to become a quality engineer. We’ve found that most quality engineer resumes include experience from Bausch + Lomb, Raytheon Technologies, and Raymond. Of recent, Bausch + Lomb had 371 positions open for quality engineers. Meanwhile, there are 81 job openings at Raytheon Technologies and 64 at Raymond.

    But if you’re interested in companies where you might earn a high salary, quality engineers tend to earn the biggest salaries at Meta, Google, and Apple. Take Meta for example. The median quality engineer salary is $140,420. At Google, quality engineers earn an average of $127,291, while the average at Apple is $123,471. You should take into consideration how difficult it might be to secure a job with one of these companies.

    View more details on quality engineer salaries across the United States.

    If you earned a degree from the top 100 educational institutions in the United States, you might want to take a look at General Electric, Lockheed Martin, and Boston Scientific. These three companies have hired a significant number of quality engineers from these institutions.

    The industries that quality engineers fulfill the most roles in are the manufacturing and health care industries. But the highest quality engineer annual salary is in the technology industry, averaging $84,890. In the health care industry they make $79,674 and average about $77,777 in the manufacturing industry. In conclusion, quality engineers who work in the technology industry earn a 21.1% higher salary than quality engineers in the automotive industry.