Salary for facilities / Equipment Eng?

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phester

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I have been round the mill of jobs over the past few years. averaging about 1.5 years per job before the place either closed down or I was unhappy with something i.e. work conditions or salary.

I was working as a technician in electronics companies making good money back in 2000 and on the right track before the tailend of the downturn hit. I got my BSC in electronics Manufacturing part time since.

I now made what I taught would be last move for a few years into a government funded research semiconductor facility in Cork.

They offered my really low wages (28K) but my boss assured me that he will bring low paid people up fast as otherwise they will leave. I had my first review and got nothing special off him. He said that I had not completed my training year yet.

Smelling a rat I decided to pry into procedures for getting a raise. I found out from him that next year he can do nothing to increase my salary bar the normal review process which will net me up to 1k max.

I am on a fixed term contract at the moment.

Is the renewal date a point that I could try to renegotiate or am I supposed to thank god that they are renewing it.

Does anybody know what a Mech / Equipment Eng should get paid. Salary guides are both higher and lower without ever publishing location or statistical data on the sample.

Very hard to find work in the south unless you know people in the Pharma industry. All recruitment people are useless saying that you don't have FDA experience which to the best of my knowledge is just paperwork & procedures for the average employee.
 
The salary scale for Mechanical / Equipment Engineers seems to vary hugely from sector to sector and region to region.
In my indirect experience the pay scales in your sector are not very flexible and I wouldn’t expect your manage to have a whole lot of discretion, particularly if it is state funded.
As for looking for a new job FDA experience just means experience working in a very regulated environment. Do you have experience with ISO 13485 (medical device) or ISO 15378 (pharmaceutical) or even 9001:2000? Any one of these would help you. If not read up on them and know the buzzwords and the frameworks that they work from. Then you can BS your way through an interview (or the recruitment people).

There are also jobs going in Derry for people like you at the moment but that’s about as far away as you can get from Cork.

BTW there are not a lot of state funded semiconductor research facilities in Cork so it’s obvious where you work. Have you tried to get involved with customers so that you can jump ship when and if they are looking for people? I know you are pretty much restricted to Shannon or the greater Dublin area in the private sector. Is this an option for you?
 
Shannon would be a possibility but I already worked in Intel and found the experience as a technician very limiting and I just really hated leixlip. Guess I'm too much of a home bird. Now im in the process of buying a home so cork would be where I would like to stay. It is not important to limit myself to any particular industry as I have experience with Gas / Gas cylinders, purchasing contract suppliers . Dionised water plants and some general equipment are under my remit. I can not afford to jump ship yet as my CV looks terrible because of so many job moves. Even though the first few were because of company shut downs.

Will have to wait and see
 
It sounds like you have experience that fits the bill for the Pharmaceutical industry, which as I'm sure you know is the big one in Cork. Maybe you should look to get some skills that they will look for while you are putting the time in with your current employer. ISO 9000 is the basic quality system that both Pharma and medical device systems are built on. Havong said that if you found Intel boring then the pharmaceutical industry might kill you!
Whatever you do best of luck with it.
 
where as i found it boring I was a technician and all work that required your brain was done by the OEM engineers. I hope that enginners in the pharma industry are treated with a bit more dignity and respect. I found that they expect you to work any anount of hours and be glad that you have the oppertunity of working for such a major place. no taught about work life balance. Well I think I would have liked it if the same job was in cork as I think I just missed home family and familiar surroundings
 
Are you being employed in a Technician role rather than as an Engineer? Seems you are being paid graduate engineer level. How long have you had that degree? If you are recently graduated.....well 28-30k is about right for a grad. engineer. Any sort of public body will have very little scope for movement on this afaik. I know a technician (civil) who went back and got his degree. He had to start at the bottom of the eng pay scale despite having prior exp. as a technician. No harm in trying to re-negotiate (nicely) though
 
Well I got my degree in 2004 but I could not get a direct eng job. I have had some that resemble eng and 1 that the eng title but it was a service eng position. So if I regarded myself with 1-2 years experience i would have taught id be on 32-34 by now. with the scope for improvement in the future. It seems that your only power is on the way into a job. There are no eng salary scales here. There are tech scales but HR have told me that I can not see them. HR here are renounded for braking the law and imtimidation.
 
Phester in my experience you're right in saying that really the only time you have any leverage for bargaining is on the way into a job, very diffiuclt to improve on the standard pay rises once you're working and competing with everyone else for a share of the budget. Really standard seems to be 3%-5%, and if you netted an additional 1k on a 28k salary well then you're getting at least an average pay increase. Are there other benefits that might bring up the overall package ? Are you paid overtime?

Are you actually working as a Facilities/Equipment Engineer ? I think you could do with some career advice and maybe get someone to go through what you've been working at to help you get a bit of perspective. I have often heard of people having difficulty going from technician to engineer when qualifying as a mature student. I've just seen your other post considering going into retail management and although I can understand why you are feeling like that you really need to step back and think more clearly about this before making such a drastic change.

My gut feeling is that you are being underpaid and could do better but without a lot of the detail its difficult to advise. I know the local IT here has an adult career counselling service so there is likely one in Cork also that you could try.
 
Yes, I am now a facilities / Equipment Eng. I fix some semiconductor equipment but at the moment DI water and gas cylinder systems are my main areas. I do more than just the above. I have to order all gasses for the company when I deem them to be empty or out of date. I am developing a system database to facilitate such.

My problem is that as a technician i went through a few job changes at the start with companies closing back in the 2000s. Now I have changed a few positions volantary to try and progress my career. I am now content with the job but think that I could achieve more. To change so soon after finally achieving an Eng status I feel would be bad for my CV. Even though I feel that I am being grossly underpaid. No benifits in my job. I think most engineers that I know are on 35+ - 40K with 2 years experience. I can not seem to get into pharma industry because recruitment agencies will say that you have not enough experience or have not FDA experience. I tell them that I have worked in a regulated and similar enviroment, but that just doesnt sell with them. Cold calling doesnt seem to get anywhere either because I think that most large multinational pharma companies HR dont do any recruitment anymore and just let the agency do the vetting for them so its a catch 22
 
Hi phester, have a look at the NSAI training website for courses they run in ISO 9001:2000. It is a two day course, it costs €630 and takes place about twice a year in Dublin and Galway. It is the system that all medical device (and pharma) companies use. ISO; 13485 is built on 9001:2000, as is 15378:2006 (standard for packaging materials in pharma).
If you can add a few courses to your CV and have a basic overview of how they work (Google will do this for you) then you should improve your profile with the agencies and improve your chances at interview.
 
Although Im not knee deep in ISO. I think I am comfortable in Iso 9001 and Iso 14001. It was part of my mature student course. But recruitment agencies say that its not FDA or GMP and thats the experience that they are looking for.

Thanks for the link anyway
 
I can understand your frustration with recruitment agencies, I don't like the idea of dealing with them myself.

However as you are happy with the job you are in right now it gives you a chance to take time to plan your next move. Lots of the experience you have will be relevant to both the medical device and pharma industries if thats where you want to go. In fact when I worked in medical devices, lots of my collagues had come from electronics backgrounds and I myself made the transition to that industry from the automotive one. Your relevant experience as an engineer really is more important its just a matter of tailoring your CV or application to make sure you get across that information. If as you say you have had lots of jobs, I think putting in all of them will put people off. Lots of CVs now have a section where you present a profile of yourself as an engineer and your experience rather than listing out every employer, maybe only include back the last 3 or 4. Think about the job you are applying for - manufacturing engineer, controls engineer, validation engineer, equipment/facilites - and tailor appropriately. You may already know this but often people forget this and they end up looking over qualified or too specialised before ever getting to the interview.

I have taken a quick look at irishjobs.ie just to see how many jobs are available via employers rather than agencies for engineers in Cork and an awful lot of the big companies are advertising directly. Maybe you should check out which ones and see if you would be interested in any of them before going through anymore agencies.
 
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