Sheet Metal Engineer

Most days tend to involve a blend of CAD work, process engineering, and shop floor coordination — modeling sheet metal designs, running formability and tolerance analysis, partnering with fabrication shops or production teams, and reviewing prototypes. You'll often spend part of the time on the documentation fabric of drawings, specs, and process documentation.

The harder part is often the interplay between design and process — sheet metal design choices affect what's actually buildable and at what cost, and process changes affect what designs work. You'll typically coordinate with manufacturing engineers, fabrication shops, and product engineers, where design and fabrication realities both shape outcomes.

People who tend to thrive here are technically rigorous, comfortable with both design and shop-floor realities, and skilled at the practical side of fabrication engineering. The trade-off is the constraints that fabrication processes impose and the cumulative work of staying current on processes. If you find satisfaction in engineering sheet metal that actually fabricates well, the role can be a strong niche in mechanical and manufacturing engineering.