Career for a lc/ms service/repair eingineer questions

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Hi, I'm currently a college student studying mechanical engineering as an undergraduate. I have had an internship last summer assisting and learning from experienced service engineers in troubleshooting and installing mass spectrometers. I never really seriously considered a job in this field until now since I was pretty much just focused on trying to get some actual working experience instead of lying around reading text books all day. I would really like to work as a service engineer, but am a bit let down by all the required travelling. So here are some of my questions for those who does this kind of job:

1. How often do you travel out of state or any where far that requires an air plane?(I would really like to just be able to drive to the places most of the time)
2. How are the working hours?
3. How much normally is the annual salary?(this might be a deciding factor if I'm often required to travel long distances away from home)
4. How are the opportunities?
5. What Path's should I take(that you recommend) to get a job in this field after i graduate?

Thanks a lot!

[HPLCEngineer]

Hi, I'm currently a college student studying mechanical engineering as an undergraduate. I have had an internship last summer assisting and learning from experienced service engineers in troubleshooting and installing mass spectrometers. I never really seriously considered a job in this field until now since I was pretty much just focused on trying to get some actual working experience instead of lying around reading text books all day. I would really like to work as a service engineer, but am a bit let down by all the required travelling. So here are some of my questions for those who does this kind of job:

1. How often do you travel out of state or any where far that requires an air plane?(I would really like to just be able to drive to the places most of the time)
Really depends on the position, and location. Some FSEs travel 80% of the time, spend one or two weekends away from home. Others generally serve just the local area driving a couple of hours a day and a flight here and there. Very job and location specific. Also depends on your speciality.
2. How are the working hours? Can be long, especially if you are away from home. DO NOT expect a 9-5 job at all..
3. How much normally is the annual salary?(this might be a deciding factor if I'm often required to travel long distances away from home) Depends where you live.
4. How are the opportunities? Once you have training and experience there will be more opportunities. But starting out could be hard.
5. What Path's should I take(that you recommend) to get a job in this field after i graduate? Do you have any lab experience like chemistry etc? Some sort of background helps.

Thanks a lot!

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When you say Do not expect a 9-5 job at all, does that mean some times you'll have to work over time and other times you don't have much to do at all? And as for the annual salary can you give me an estimated range from minimum to maximum? Also if you are a lc/ms service engineer right now, how do you like it? (pros and cons?)

Thanks!

[Kostas Petritis]

I am not an MS service engineer but I know a lot of them. One of the factors in terms of salary is which company you are working for as some pay better than others (I won't mention any names). Salary would be 50K to 100K per year with some exceptions that can go even higher than that. The thing is that it is difficult to find good service engineers and if you become one of those you will become very valuable for the company (which might mean more travel). I would personally suggest to start as application chemist to understand the LC-MS part and then service engineer for both LC and MS instrumentation...

Your best bet for less travel by plane will be to live in a area with a lot of mass spec labs around (i.e. California, Boston etc). If you live in Wyoming expect to only travel by plane...