<p>I am just curious who gets R&D jobs in companies like boeing or airbus? I mean jobs concerned with technology readiness levels 1-4. Are those engineers with 10-year expierience and phd degree? Or BS degree is sufficient? Is it possible to land such job right after graduating with phd degree? Thanks for any insight.</p>
<p>Generally BS degree with a bunch of experience or else people with advanced degrees. With a PhD, you absolutely can land that sort of job right after graduating. In fact, it is about the only type of industry job that you are truly qualified for, as you would be overqualified for most others.</p>
<p>In my experience in one of the large aerospace companies, the MS degree is almost becoming the standard degree. Some people are hired with their BS degrees but will usually go back for their MS degrees (or do it part time) within a few years. A small number of Phds are hired but as with the MS degrees, it was usually obtained after starting work.</p>
<p>Most of the R&D work was done by people with a number of years of experience and they had the whole range of degrees; BS, MS, Phd. I can recall a few new Phds that were hired directly into the R&D area but they had some work experience prior to starting their Phd programs.</p>
<p>I feel the need to chime in again to expand a little on what HPuck35 said.</p>
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<p>The vast majority of PhD’s are earned either without prior work experience or without being funded by am employer though. This is based on the sheer number of people I know with or working on a PhD. Maybe a quarter went to industry first before coming back to graduate school and only one or two people I know have had their PhD funded by a company they worked for.</p>
<p>Additionally, quite literally every PhD I know who graduated and went to work in industry is working in an R&D position regardless of prior experience. I mean that when I say 100%. Given, many of them go to national labs, academia, and a variety of other research organizations, but they all do research, including those that go work for places like Boeing or Northrop or Lockheed with no “prior experience.”</p>
<p>I suspect that this perceived difference has to do with the two perspectives from which we are viewing this. There are only a portion of PhD students whose goal it is to work in industry, including nearly all of those who are getting it sponsored by their employer. From the employer’s point of view, this likely makes it look like a much higher percentage of PhDs working in industry had prior experience that what it looks like from the academic side of things when you look at the whole group of PhDs.</p>
<p>The bottom line is, though, that I know plenty of PhDs with no prior experience who graduated to go work in R&D at Lockheed-Martin SkunkWorks, Boeing PhantomWorks or Northrop-Grumman’s advanced development group and a variety of other similar organization. It is just a matter of knowing what companies are looking to do research for which you would be in-demand. Most PhD students should be able to figure that out by simply following the money and paper trail that funds their research if their advisor hasn’t already made this clear to them.</p>
<p>That said, I think the points you made are important because they point out that you don’t necessarily have to go get a PhD and come at the R&D positions from the outside in. You can very easily start at a company with your BS and work your way up, earning your MS on company time and using your experience to qualify you for that R&D job.</p>
<p>Why only a portion of phd students wants to work in the industry? You can have your research directly applied in new products, isn’t it the best option?</p>
<p>At one point I managed a combined group of structural engineers and structural dynamics engineers. There were about 20 structural engineers; none had their Phds, 4 had their BS only degrees and the rest had their MS degrees. There were 9 dynamics engineers; 1 had a BS only (and was working on his MS), 3 had their MS degrees and 5 had their Phds. </p>
<p>We were not an R&D group but were working on some highly technical NASA programs, so it is probably splitting hairs to say whether or not they were doing R&D type work. </p>
<p>The company did have a separate R&D group where, as I stated before, there were a range of degrees, but all with a fair amount of experience.</p>
<p>Back to the OP initial question; Is it possible to land an R&D job with a Phd right out of college. Yes, it is. Depends on demand for the specific knowledge you have and the state of the art of the area you have that knowledge in. If the field is older and more established, technically, then there will be educated people with experience ahead of you that will probably be first in line for the R&D jobs. Newer fields, probably more chance to land that R&D job right out of school. </p>
<p>The problem comes when you try to judge where the talent will be needed out in future years. What is hot at one time will draw a number of students into the field and in a few years the field will be saturated. Business positions also change. </p>
<p>Don’t get so wrapped up that the job title must include “R&D” in it. One companies “R&D” work may be another’s product development work. If you enjoy the work you do and are challenged by it, then it is good work.</p>
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Generally the engineers with the better understanding of theory and knowledge of the subject to be researched. I started on research programs within months of being hired with my BS, albeit in a more junior role, and was working alongside a handful of PhD’s and a bunch of MS’s.</p>
<p>Bear in mind that many companies do not specifically place people into R&D, only programs. A person may work entirely on research programs but is far more likely to divide time between research and production programs, as well as supplementary work like writing proposals.</p>
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There are advantages and disadvantages to both industry and academia, and many people prefer one or the other - there is no universal “best option”. Industry is generally easier to get into and is in many ways just generally simpler. Academia allows for more freedom (including partial ownership of anything you invent, a rarity in industry!) but is much more risk and work, and is quite difficult to enter.</p>
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<p>I suppose that depends on why you would want to get a PhD. Generally the reason is because the student really enjoys the topic and wants to perform research in that topic. Research comes in a variety of flavors, but if you get a PhD, you better like at least one of those flavors.</p>
<p>In terms of eventual jobs, different types of jobs will perform different types of research. Academia gives you a lot of freedom over the type of research you do but it is difficult to get into and it is a zillion-hour-per-week job. You generally can do any kind of research you want as long as you can convince someone to give you money for it, including the very fundamental research.</p>
<p>On the other end of the spectrum is industry, which will tend to have more normal working hours and you won’t be solely responsible for your own funding most of the time but you usually only work on research problems that are of interest to the company and are typically quite applied. This isn’t a universal truth, as I know some companies (e.g. Northrop-Grumman) have small groups within their R&D wing that retain a lot of freedom, but generally speaking the companies dictate most of what you research. You just don’t have the freedom you do elsewhere.</p>
<p>National labs and places like NASA or AFRL generally fall somewhere in between those two extremes, though both have their own caveats. For example, national labs generally produce almost exclusively classified research so you can’t publish except internally. NASA is subject to a lot of politics.</p>
<p>Basically, it is a personal decision, and some people prefer one type of job over the other, or specifically don’t want a particular type of job. I, for example, am no longer interested in industry. I tend to be much more meticulous in my style of research than most industry groups like to be and I am particularly drawn to the very fundamental problems that most industry groups leave to the academics. I have other friends who absolutely want to work for Boeing or Lockheed. It is all about preference.</p>
<p>I have a PhD in EE and I run an R&D group. I’ve always worked in industry, but I can see the appeal of academia. </p>
<p>I valued the financial benefits, work-life balance, and the freedom to live where I wanted over the academic freedom. I also really enjoyed working on research that was immediately valuable and have done a few startups. </p>
<p>I hire PhDs and MS grads with expertise in my area, and sometimes exceptional BS grads to work in R&D and then we pay for their MS and sometimes their PhD. Sometimes people who have worked a number of years go back and get their PhD. </p>
<p>You don’t need a PhD to lead research, but most of my project leaders have one or are in the process of getting one.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that PhDs that go into the workforce immediately after getting their degree do have experience. They’ve been engaged in research as a full time job for the last 3-6 years. It may have not been industrial research, but they still spent plenty of time in the lab working on problems that nobody else has solved before.</p>