Technical Writer trying to pry my way into formal engineering

[Lordofwords]

Hello.

Bit of background on my work experience...

I was hired as a Tech Writer at a defense contractor 3 years ago solely to assist with doc cleanup efforts. But after I'd participated on a couple proposal reviews, I got assigned to a development IPT working on a program with strict process requirements. I spent a couple months training with the program's outbound Quality Manager getting up to speed on all the requirements and eventually took control of the CDRL set, mostly interfacing with engineers to make sure documentation stayed aligned and with PM/schedule to meet our design review dates. The nature of the product and the lifecycle stage made it so I needed to be familiar with the system requirements and I was transitioned again to the SysE team for the last 6 months of the assignment.

The program left our hands about a year ago. Now that I've had a taste of working closely within Engineering and knowing that it's a much more stable role in the industry, I have explored various ways that I can "formally" get the engineer title. Going through the full Calc series at this stage in my life isn't really feasible. I have found the ASQ quality engineering cert lines up with the experience I gained.

What are the thoughts here about this cert? We are expanding our onsite lab here in the coming months and I feel there is opportunity in my company to be a quality SME.

Thanks in advance.

 

[RoxaneB]

Hello.

Bit of background on my work experience...

I was hired as a Tech Writer at a defense contractor 3 years ago solely to assist with doc cleanup efforts. But after I'd participated on a couple proposal reviews, I got assigned to a development IPT working on a program with strict process requirements. I spent a couple months training with the program's outbound Quality Manager getting up to speed on all the requirements and eventually took control of the CDRL set, mostly interfacing with engineers to make sure documentation stayed aligned and with PM/schedule to meet our design review dates. The nature of the product and the lifecycle stage made it so I needed to be familiar with the system requirements and I was transitioned again to the SysE team for the last 6 months of the assignment.

The program left our hands about a year ago. Now that I've had a taste of working closely within Engineering and knowing that it's a much more stable role in the industry, I have explored various ways that I can "formally" get the engineer title. Going through the full Calc series at this stage in my life isn't really feasible. I have found the ASQ quality engineering cert lines up with the experience I gained.

What are the thoughts here about this cert? We are expanding our onsite lab here in the coming months and I feel there is opportunity in my company to be a quality SME.

Thanks in advance.

Are you an engineer? That seems like the first thing you would need to "get the engineer title."

 

[Lordofwords]

Are you an engineer? That seems like the first thing you would need to "get the engineer title."

I am not, hence my interest in the certification. As part of a SysE team, I did Engineering tasks like create/review links in DOORS. Also experienced creating SysML artifacts in the magic grid framework.

 

[Tidge]

The experience sounds like "_____ Quality Engineer" is a possibility. I've known lots of people who've gotten a job with that sort of title that weren't particularly good at it but somebody liked them and gave them the job. A CQE certification can help to get past an initial AI candidate screen, but it is really going to depend on the 'human factor'.

On the flip side... I have a highly technical degree, but it is not an engineering degree. I have many years of a wide variety of hands-on experience with a variety of engineering projects (doing engineering). I worked for some people that flat out refused me an "Engineer" title because (their words) "you don't have an Engineering degree". At that place... it took one manager to call BS on this... and also get HR to recognize some obvious discrimination, while pointing to the work I was doing at that company, to get me an Engineer title.

The CQE certification won't be a magic bullet. The body-of-knowledge is pretty well motivated, but there are areas of it that some (many?) people with "Quality" titles won't remember are in the BoK, or don't care about, or couldn't be trusted to understand. Less impolitely: the ASQ CQE BoK is somewhat generalized and may not be completely useful for any given industry... so there is a little (hypothetical?) wiggle room for CQEs to 'get things wrong' about some BoK areas in their daily jobs. If I was interviewing a green candidate with a CQE I'd probably ask some questions about the part of the BoK that applied most directly for the role... so I'd not ask anything about prints for a software QE role for example, but if it was a supplier or design QE role that involved prints I might ask a general question about prints/tolerancing/fishcakes. The role would have to be somewhat focused before I asked a statistical question, or it would be pretty general to gage candidate's thinking. but i digress...

Best bet... get a job that has you doing engineering, be obviously good at it, find an internal advocate.