Can you quiz me to find out my career goals and what i should be pursuing to progress my career? EXPERIENCE Pursuit Aerospace | Leadership Development Program Manufacturing Engineer 2nd Rotation Stuart, FL | May 2025 – Present ● Cut stock-on rework from 75% to 25% on tight-tolerance diameter features by converting 10 analog swing gauges to digital go/no-go indicators and correcting thermal growth error at the machine ● Avoided $31,000 in capital by retrofitting 10 owned analog swing gauges with $850 digital indicators and 3D printed housings instead of purchasing replacements at $4,000 each ● Identified shop floor thermal variation as root cause of parts passing at the machine and failing CMM, measuring several thousandths of Inconel growth against a ±0.002 in tolerance band ● Implemented soak time requirements, temperature monitoring, and adjusted machining targets after quantifying thermal contribution to dimensional variability ● Developed 30+ technical plans for critical hole features on a customer development program, defining operation sequencing, tool selection, and drawing compliance ● Created 10–15 process sheets and revised 15–20 more in Solid Edge, correcting inherited errors and clarifying operator instructions across 3 shifts Manufacturing Engineer 1st Rotation Thomasville, GA | August 2024 – May 2025 ● Owned production, MRB disposition, operation sheets, and setups for 4 rotating titanium turbofan part numbers, directing a senior manufacturing engineer and a quality engineer within 6 months of starting full time ● Increased monthly output 58% on 4 part numbers transferred from a closed sister site 2.5 years behind shipping commitments, raising shipped volume from 5 to 7.91 parts per month ● Achieved 0 findings on 4 owned part numbers during a NADCAP conventional machining audit in which the wider site received multiple findings ● Built an Excel VBA tool that imported raw CMM data and returned instant drawing-conformance verdicts, cutting 8 hours of manual review from customer serial number release approval ● Established documented tool change points for turning and milling special processes through tool wear studies, closing a customer audit finding for lack of tool control ● Authored 2 PFMEAs and control plans for part numbers entering production and revised 2 existing sets that lacked required failure modes and controls Manufacturing Engineer Intern Thomasville, GA | May 2024 – August 2024 ● Built an Excel tooling demand model covering every machine and shared operation in a 100,000 sq ft facility, setting min and max inventory levels that eliminated stockouts idling machines and forcing expedited orders, still in production use 2 years later ● Designed 3D printed go/no-go gauges in Siemens NX that let polishing operators verify airfoil geometry at the booth, halving CMM trips on an operation consuming 3 hours per inspection ● Ranked statistically out-of-control machining operations by rework contribution in QC-Calc, giving the engineering team a priority order for corrective action SKILLS Technical Skills: PFMEA, Control Plans, SPC, Gage R&R, Root Cause Analysis, Lean Six Sigma, Kaizen, 5S, GD&T, CNC Milling, CNC Turning, EDM, CMM, AS9100, NADCAP, 3D printing Software: Siemens NX, Solid Edge, Solidworks, Minitab, QC-Calc, Epicor, Syteline, VBA, MATLAB, Python: Languages: Fluent in English, Portuguese, and Spanish EDUCATION University of Florida | B.S. in Aerospace Engineering August 2024
It is great to meet you! You have built an incredibly strong foundation in aerospace manufacturing, especially with your hands-on experience in thermal error mitigation, custom VBA automation, and leading production lines in your Leadership Development Program.
To help us design the perfect progression strategy for your career, let's start with a quick career diagnostic quiz. This will help us pinpoint exactly where your passions lie and which path fits you best.
I have set up a personalized career diagnostic quiz for you inline. It is designed to evaluate your preferences between the technical expert track and engineering management, as well as your ideal industry environment.
Take a moment to go through these questions, and we will use your results to map out your target roles and a strategic 1-to-5-year action plan!
I am ready, let's start the career quiz!
It's exciting to kick this off! Based on your extensive experience with custom automation and operational ownership during your Leadership Development Program rotations, analyzing your preferences will help us trace the best roadmap forward.
Let's dive into your results. Looking at your answers, we want to evaluate three main dimensions: your preference between the technical expert track and the engineering management path, your ideal industry environment like Tier 1 aerospace versus fast-paced space startups, and your primary career motivators.
Your background shows a rare mix of deep technical grit, like mitigating thermal expansion on Inconel, and highly strategic operational execution, like directing teams and boosting monthly output by 58%. It's common for high-performing engineers in rotational programs to feel pulled in both directions.
To narrow this down, when you think about your next rotation or your post-program landing role, which of these scenarios makes you feel more energized?
I want a hybrid role where I can do both technical system design and project leadership.
Wanting a hybrid role that blends technical design with project leadership is a brilliant target, and it fits your operational wins perfectly. Balancing deep engineering with high-level coordination is exactly what makes a successful (TPM) or Systems Engineer in the aerospace world.
With your current experience in a Leadership Development Program, you're already demonstrating the exact dual-threat skill set this hybrid path demands.
Let's take a look at how your background maps directly to the core competencies of this hybrid career path:
| Core Hybrid Competency | Your Proven Experience |
|---|---|
| Technical Problem Solving | Mitigating Inconel thermal expansion, designing CMM verification gauges, and writing custom VBA data tools. |
| Operational Leadership | Directing engineering resources, handling MRB dispositions, and boosting rotating parts output by 58%. |
| Cross-Functional Communication | Creating and revising 40+ process sheets to align engineering specs with 3-shift operator execution. |
To successfully pivot into these hybrid roles, you will want to strategically assess your specific skills and leadership achievements to position yourself for the best opportunities.
Before we map out the specific industries, let's look at how to structure your target path. Would you like to explore the core strengths we should highlight from your background next, or dive straight into target roles like TPM and Systems Engineering?
Continue to assess my strengths and leadership potential
Let's zoom in on your specific strengths to see how we can package them for those highly competitive hybrid roles. Your rotation achievements are more than just a list of daily tasks—they are measurable, strategic wins that prove you can handle both deep technical friction and complex project orchestration.
Evaluating Your Technical Achievements
To land a hybrid role like a or TPM, you have to prove you can mitigate complex physical risks on the shop floor before they derail a program's timeline. Your work with thermal growth on Inconel parts is the ultimate example of this. You didn't just spot a problem; you systematically quantified the physical variation, modeled the thermal contribution, and changed the operational process.
Another massive highlight is your custom VBA data tool. By taking raw CMM data and instantly returning a conformance verdict, you eliminated 8 hours of manual engineering review per release. That is a direct contribution to process automation. In a hybrid role, this proves you don't just tolerate administrative bottlenecks—you build digital systems to bypass them entirely.
Quantifying Your Cross-Functional Leadership
The second half of your hybrid toolkit is raw operational leadership. Boosting rotating titanium parts output by 58% on a critical, backlogged program is a staggering win for someone in their first rotation. Managing a cross-functional squad of a senior manufacturing engineer and a quality engineer within six months of starting full-time proves you have the natural authority and credibility required to lead complex project teams.
Now that we have framed your core achievements, the next step is to connect these specific strengths directly to key hybrid roles and map out which target industries—like Tier 1 primes or agile space startups—will value them the most.
Continue to map these strengths to target roles like TPM and Systems Engineer
It is exciting to bridge your raw engineering wins directly to these target hybrid roles. Transitioning from a hands-on manufacturing engineer to a big-picture system orchestrator is all about how you position your accomplishments. Let's look closely at how your specific background maps directly to the day-to-day realities of Technical Program Managers, Systems Engineers, and Operations Integration Leads.
The Hybrid Role Triad
In the aerospace ecosystem, hybrid roles act as the critical connective tissue between pure design, the physical shop floor, and business management. Let's break down the three most common targets for your skill set:
TPM
noun
A manager who leads cross-functional technical teams, driving product delivery while actively contributing to system design, risk mitigation, and technical trade-off decisions.
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: You own the timeline, but you also own the technical risk. Your background in leading a cross-functional squad within six months of starting at Pursuit Aerospace and managing MRB dispositions is prime evidence that you can drive program milestones without losing sight of the underlying engineering bottlenecks.
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: Here, you manage requirements and interface control documents. Your experience writing 30+ detailed technical plans for critical features, identifying tolerance stacks, and dealing with CMM verification maps beautifully into this role. Systems Engineers must trace physical limits back to design specs, just like you did with thermal growth.
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Operations Integration Lead: This role bridges the gap between design engineering and physical assembly. Your project converting analog swing gauges to digital go/no-go indicators to eliminate operator error is a textbook operations integration win.
Visualizing Your Fit in the Development Lifecycle
To show you where you sit in the program lifecycle, I have initiated a visualization. This will help you see how your background bridges the gap between classical engineering disciplines and program management.
A three-region comparison comparing technical deep-dive skills, project leadership capabilities, and their central hybrid roles.
This hybrid sweet spot is precisely where your skill set is most valuable. Your next major strategic choice is choosing where to apply these hybrid skills, as the day-to-day culture and engineering speed differ dramatically depending on the sector.