B.S. in Mechanical Engineer Technology here. (Similar to ME, except with less calculus/theory, and more applications work and lab time.)
I work at a company that makes LED-based signs, built mainly in extruded aluminum cabinets, but we also have some sheet metal cabinets. Some stuff I do:
- Pro/Engineer model design, and creation of manufacturing drawings for use on the shop floor.
- Development and refinement of standards for manufacture, and for our Pro/E parts library.
- Select various machines for purchase recommendations, and fix various machines as they break.
- Keep pushing for automation. (For reasons very much unknown to me, management seems to prefer to keep paying labor costs, rather than pay the money up-front to automate some of our most repetitive processes. There's not a single pick'n'place machine in the company.)
- Electronic circuit design.
- Thermal design with respect to electronic components.
- Microcontroller programming (C language).
- Getting paid to do stuff I used to do as a hobby.
How I got this job? It went pretty much as I planned: Get an internship, and make sure that I do well, and make sure that they know that I'd be interested in a permanent job there after graduation.
1 week before graduation, I had a written job offer in hand. And I'm still there, even after 5 rounds of layoffs. (Turns out I got into an industry that's not doing too well during the downturn, and has yet to show signs of recovering.)
The pay...well, I could probably be doing better, but that would be under the assumption that I possess any negotiation skills whatsoever. For someone living on his own, and who's monetarily efficient (or "cheap", whatever), it seems to be more than adequate. I should have the last of my student loans paid off by the end of 2011.
But of course, this is the sort of place where most people leave on time every day - if not, someone from management may stop by and say something to the tune of, "It's 5:00. Go home."