Amtec Hiring Guides

How to Hire Project Engineers in Portland

Amtec Hiring Guides

How to Hire Project Engineers in Portland

Current Environment

Project engineers manage many facets of engineering and technical projects, including management of personnel, budgets, and scheduling to deliver successful projects on time and within the established budget.

The best project engineers are a central point of contact for projects, dealing with stakeholders across all areas. They will interpret the needs, expectations, and limitations of all aspects of a project, communicate effectively and essentially solve problems all the time with the aim of successful project delivery.

The field is broad, and many different industries and types of companies need to hire project engineers.

Industries

  • Aerospace
  • Manufacturing
  • Architecture

Position Titles

  • Project Manager
  • Process Engineer
  • Product Engineer
  • Engineering Technician
  • Senior Project Engineer

Fields That Need Project Engineers

  • Aerospace engineering
  • Mechanical engineering
  • Civil engineering
  • Construction
  • Manufacturing
  • Technology

History

Until about 1900, engineering projects were generally run and managed by engineers themselves. By as the industrial revolution advanced, engineering projects became more advanced as well, and project-management tools and techniques were needed to systematically manage complex engineering projects.

Project management became a distinct discipline in the 1950s and was applied to the engineering field to determine project planning, scheduling, cost estimating, cost management, and engineering economics.

How will Recruiting project engineers Help Your Company?

How will Hiring project engineers Help Your Company?

Recruiting the top project engineers will ensure your engineering projects are planned, managed, and completed on time and budget. While having engineering knowledge related to a particular industry is important, project engineers need specialized training and knowledge in the application of project management tools and systems.

Communication Skills

The best project engineers are good communicators. Typically, project engineers don’t just work with other engineers. They will need to engage with almost every team across an organization, including finance, HR, risk management, procurement, technology, communications, and many more. The ability to communicate verbally and in writing to a variety of stakeholders across many levels of an organization is essential for this role.

The critical skills that an engineering project manager must have to be successful are a problem-solving, organization, management, and planning.

Project Management Approaches

According to Inc.com, there are four common project management approaches and styles:

Waterfall

This is a common approach that is ideal for projects that involve large teams. Constant and effective communication is essential.

Agile

The agile approach breaks down projects into milestones and works best used for projects where the requirements are a little less defined and flexibility is needed as the project evolves.

Strategic

This is the “big picture” approach, and success depends on the project engineer’s ability to effectively analyze, define and communicate the project goals, anticipate issues, and solve problems along the way to stay on the well-defined path to the end goal.

Scrum

The scrum method entails frequent (but typically short) meetings for team communication, task prioritization, and to track the team’s progress within a specific timeframe. This method is best for innovative and complicated projects with well-defined roles and responsibilities.

project engineer Details

Responsibilities

Project engineering is typically the management of engineering and technical projects – this includes management of personnel, budget, and scheduling.

The person (or sometimes team) in this essential role puts all the operational details of an engineering project – from pre-planning all the way to delivery – into a system, then tracks and manages the plan.

The project engineer will act as a coordinator, dealing with stakeholders across all areas of the project. They will interpret the needs, expectations, and limitations of each, and bring them together with the aim of successful project delivery.

The project engineer needs to understand the principles of project management, including budgeting, people, vendor and team management, and timelines for deliverables.

Let’s take a closer look at the details of the role of a project engineer.

  • Scheduling, pre-planning, and resource forecasting for engineering and other technical activities and projects.
  • Manage workflow for engineering project teams, and other enterprise teams involved in a project.
  • Ensure the accuracy of financial forecasts and project schedules, and track both throughout the project.
  • Project engineers manage project team resources and training, and often are responsible for the safety of the project and workers, and safety compliance and risk mitigation.

Looking for another position? View other positions we place in Portland, Oregon.

Education

Though some project engineer jobs require a master’s degree or doctorate, many project engineer jobs only require a bachelor’s degree, experience in the industry, and strong management skills.

U.S. News and World Report ranked the top 3 undergraduate colleges for engineering (those that also offer a doctorate).

These programs train students in the principles of engineering and offer specialized courses on the principles of project management. Armed with a degree, graduates have a multitude of opportunities working in the public or private sector.

Top Schools

  •

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  • University of California Berkeley

  • Georgia Institute of Technology

2019 U.S. National Data

Salary Range

project engineers in the U.S.

$62k
Low
$103k
Average
$150k
High

$99k

Average OR
Salary

$47.76

Average OR
Hourly
960k

Total project engineers Employed in the U.S.

88.6%

Men

11.4%

Women

project engineer Salary Comparison

National

Since the title project engineer can be applied to several different industries, the data below is based on the position title applied across aerospace, mechanical, and civil engineering disciplines.

Nationally, annual compensation for project engineers ranges between $62,000 for entry-level and $150,000 for seasoned project engineers. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were 960,000 project engineers employed in 2019, with just 11.4% of those employed being women. It is estimated the 12.8% are Asian, 5.8% Black or African American, 8% Hispanic or Latino, and 79.6% are white.

The median annual wage for project engineers was $103,000 compared with $94,500, the median annual wage for all engineers.

Oregon

The average annual salary for project engineers in Oregon was 99k in 2019. The hourly wage averaged $47.76.

For more detailed compensation information for project engineers in Portland, download our free compensation/salary report below.

Working in Portland

Do project engineers find the city of Portland a good place to live and work? There seems to be a large community of people who adore Portland and would never want to live anywhere else. On the other side of that coin, there are things about living in the city that are not rated highly.

The city is a very beautiful place and offers a unique opportunity for outdoor recreation with the ocean one hour west and the mountains one hour east. The city also celebrates open spaces, gardens, and green living.  On the jobs front, Portland has emerged as a tech haven, thus the moniker “Silicon Forest”.

Here are a few other pros for Portland.

Pros

    • Outdoor recreation. In Portland, it’s not event-based. It’s a lifestyle. And the city easily accommodates adventure and exploration with easy access to urban forests, trails, and bike paths.
    • Natural beauty: With Mount Hood towering in the distance, sprawling urban forests, the sparkling Willamette River flowing through the middle of town, and 275 public parks and gardens, it’s a truly beautiful city.
    • Diversity. Portland is also a place of strong character, and the city attracts and welcomes people of the same ilk. After all, an unofficial tagline for the city is “Keep Portland Weird”.
    • Transportation. This Quora exchange explains how one Portlander enjoys the option of walking, biking, taking light rail, bus or streetcar. The options are numerous because the downtown is built densely in small blocks.
    • Jobs. As Oregon’s largest city, almost four times larger than the next largest city, Portland offers the greatest number of job opportunities. Recruitment agency and staffing company services are also available from Amtec for Portland.
    • No sales tax. YAY!

On the other hand, there are a few complaints about living and working in the city.

Cons

    • The weather. For those with Seasonal Affective Disorder, the climate can be a challenge. The city sees an average of 144 days of sunshine, and the other days are cloudy or rainy. and’s climate would not be good.
    • High housing costs. Home purchase costs and rents were rising prior to the pandemic, and that has accelerated due to the low inventory of available homes.
    • Traffic. Although public transportation gets a thumbs up, more people are starting to talk about traffic as an issue in the city.
Portland, Oregon

Current Weather

Not your city? View other cities where we place project engineers.

Demand for project engineers in Portland

Demand for project engineers in Portland

The employment of project engineers (along with architectural and engineering managers) is projected to grow 3 percent from 2019 to 2029, about as fast as the average for all occupations.

As technology inspires continuous innovation, industries are developing new products, services, and processes every year. Project engineers are at the forefront of these evolving industries, improving efficiency and cost-effectiveness, and providing the “north star” for project teams marching toward a goal.

The supply of candidates and demand for open positions have a direct correlation to a company's ability to hire. Download a free Supply and Demand report for project engineers in Portland, Oregon below.

How to Hire the Best project engineers

Finding and hiring the best project engineer candidates can save you money right away and well into the future.

The costs of making a bad hire are well documented. The cost can run as much as 30% of the employee's first-year earnings according to the US Department of Labor. Bad hires can cost a whopping $240,000 in expenses related to hiring, compensation, and retention per The Undercover Recruiter. 74% of companies who admit they've hired the wrong person for a position lost an average of $14,900 for each bad hire according to CareerBuilder. These statistics support our long-held position that behavioral questions are the best way to get to know your candidates and past behavior is the best indicator of future performance.

Recruiting Best Practices

The information below comes from the best practices Amtec uses for finding the highest quality candidates.

Defining the Position

When defining the role you are creating, we recommend a position profile to fully evaluate the position you are hiring for. You must decide if the engineer can work remotely or must work in Oregon. If working in Portland is essential, make sure you include that in your job posting so candidates can decide how many miles they can commute.

How to Source the Best Candidates

When you are looking to source the best quality candidates for your open positions, make sure you have done the legwork to hire an "A Player". You can do this by making sure your company's perspective is aligned with the current market, you have taken into account the job responsibilities, as well as what type of characteristics you are looking for to fit your company culture. Then proceed to write a job posting to attract high-quality candidates.

Characteristics of project engineers

Project engineering is a field that is evolving. And in the field, there are specializations and nuances. The lack of understanding of the subtle differences in needed skillsets can cause recruiters to misidentify candidates and as a result, create a backlog in hiring. If you need to recruit the sharpest engineering professionals:

  • Find candidates who have studied both engineering and project or program management.
  • Special for certifications in project management from professional associations.
  • Look for candidates who revel in analyzing and solving problems.
  • Find candidates who communicate well, both written and oral.
  • The best candidates enjoy being focused, self-motivated, and innovative.
  • Consider candidates who will best fit your engineering and project environment.
  • Partner with a recruiting agency that specializes in project engineering to find the best candidates that can do the job, and become a valued member of your team.

How to Screen Candidates

You wrote a job posting, posted the position online, and received a lot more resumes than you’d bargained for! Next comes the enormous task of sorting through those resumes to eliminate the ones that are clearly not a good fit. Now, you have a stack of resumes for candidates who have potential. So how do you go about screening the remaining candidates?

It starts on the phone! As a recruiter, the goal of your telephone screening is to learn more about your candidates. You can confirm that they have the educational qualifications and relevant experience, but you also need to determine if they would fit into your company's culture. To make this job easier, use a system to consistently evaluate results. This way you can equally and objectively compare candidates and evaluate their "soft skills", like communication and thinking process. Download Amtec's Professional Assessment Questionnaire below to help with screening candidates.

Free Professional Assessment Questionnaire

An individually customized questionnaire that helps assess a candidate's competence with written communication skills, thinking processes, and other relevant skills.

How to Interview Candidates

At Amtec, we believe in the power of behavoral interview questions to go beyond the experience and skills listed on the candidate's resume. Although you will want to confirm in the interview that the candidate does indeed have the experience listed on their resume, your assessment needs to go much deeper than that. An interview using behavioral questions can help you determine how well the candidate will fit with your company culture.

Download Amtec's best practices on conducting super effective interviews to find the best candidates and fill your open jobs.

Behavioral Interview Guide

Get the info you need to hire the best project engineers

Free Interview Guide