Information Technology (IT) engineers always get big bucks. What about mechanical design engineers? If you believe that ‘career as a design engineer is not that financially rewarding’, it is a complete myth. As a design engineer one can make an excellent and financially growing career. Here is small chart which shows the career growth. Let us discuss what it takes to pursue it.

Designation	CAD Engineer	Senior Engineer	Project Engineer	Engineering Manager
Experience	0-2 years	3-4 Years	4-6 Years	6-10 years
Reported By		CAD Engineers	Senior Engineers	Project Engineers

Let us take a case of a design engineer hired in an organization. His first task is to create engineering drawings. Any suggested changes or corrections to the drawing come back to him from quality checker as markups.

As he starts gaining experience with drawings, the next step towards improvement is to get less and less number of markups every day and finally reaching to a state of zero markups. Once he achieves this ‘no-markup’ condition, he has become capable of doing a design quality check/review himself.

Now he can start checking the drawings created by the junior members from his team. And he has become a better design engineer who is ready to shoulder more responsibilities.