I spent the first two years out of under­grad as a Project Engi­neer at Pacif­ic Die Cut Indus­tries (PDCI) — a con­tract man­u­fac­tur­er ser­vic­ing the auto­mo­tive and med­ical indus­try. I start­ed sup­port­ing engi­neers on med­ical and auto­mo­tive projects and even­tu­al­ly became the lead engi­neer on med­ical projects.

As a Project Engi­neer at Pacif­ic Die Cut Indus­tries, I was the tech­ni­cal point of con­tact from the ini­tial client request for quote until the clien­t’s prod­uct was at full-scale production.

This first entailed cost­ing out the project so the sales staff could present a quote. For larg­er clients, such as Stryk­er or Boston Sci­en­tif­ic the focus was on devel­op­ing an opti­mized man­u­fac­tur­ing process based on require­ments giv­en. Con­verse­ly, with star­tups, I would co-devel­op the prod­uct with them (prod­uct draw­ings, mate­r­i­al sourc­ing). For projects that moved for­ward, I would work with the pro­duc­tion and qual­i­ty assur­ance staff on imple­ment­ing the man­u­fac­tur­ing process. Once the process was final­ized and doc­u­ment­ed, my role on the project would come to a close as pro­duc­tion staff took on project ownership.