I graduated with my M.S in Biomedical Engineering in 2016 and obtained a starting job later that year in a basic non-engineering quality control position because of a local contact. The beginning of this year some employees suggested to apply for a PhD and since the skills I’m developing seemed directly relevant for preparation of doing original research I decided to explore the PhD route in biomedical engineering and the opportunities that could be opened with a PhD in engineering. One major problem with this is I have large student loans which I thought I could lessen extensively this year but this ended up not being realistic; I calculated how the loans would change over 5 years and don’t feel comfortable pursuing the PhD unless there is a certainty of great financial gains and returns on investment after I have finished my education.
Since I only have one year of experience would I have to do postdocs or would I be able to go straight into research engineering positions in industry? My graduate studies focused on neural engineering so that was the area I was hoping to further specialize in with the PhD, my understanding is this would most likely require an academic career with a small possibility of industry jobs. Please tell me if this is a gray area and if there is large uncertainty in the area of neural technology at the moment, I can’t afford to take risks at the time so I may just have to delay my education.
Presently I’m questioning if I should instead advance myself into an engineering position and pursue my education at a later stage of life after I have tackled my debt. I however then come up with the dismal outlook for starting an engineering career with a biomedical engineering degree as I have seen on many threads on this forum. I would like to get an engineering job within the medical device industry or the pharmaceutical industry where my present job is within a contract based pharmaceutical company that has clients to most of the large pharmaceutical companies such as Genentech, Pfizer, Eli Lilley, etc. I’m currently in Upstate New York but am preparing to relocate to an urban environment outside of New York to anywhere in the country including California. The entry positions I see related to medical devices are either R&D engineering, quality and verification engineering, or project engineering so would it be productive to focus on these types of positions or would it be a waste of time?
Also in my undergraduate years I was able to obtain an A.S in Engineering Science and B.S in Physics with electrical engineering electives and a REU dealing with signal processing of a medical device. The neural engineering specialization in my graduate studies focused on signal processing and imaging applications to the brain so I wasn’t sure if this also opens up the possibility for general signal processing jobs. I wasn’t sure if a possible career pathway in my situation would require first getting an entry level position in imaging or signal processing and after 5-10 years experience then seeing if I can use my expertise for medical devices. I have time I can use to gain more skills in programming and in the field of signal processing so it would be useful to know if this is a potential career pathway for me or if this wouldn’t be worth my time.
I’m just trying to see the big picture here and how I would go about tackling my problems, thanks to anyone who had the time to read!