day in the life of a Field Service Engineer
The role of a Life Science or Medical Field Service Engineer / Specialist is a varied one. They carry out installations, preventative maintenance and repairs on a range of equipment depending on their area of specialisation. Customers can vary from Universities, Hospitals, Pharmaceutical companies and Research sites. Some of their specific responsibilities might include:
- Organising their own work schedule
- Diagnosing and repairing products, including preventative maintenance, visits and installations of equipment on customer sites.
- Determining repair needs and parts required for and at customer sites.
- Troubleshooting customer-related problems, and maintaining customer satisfaction and service levels.
- Developing close working relationships with customers, feeding back sales leads and market intelligence to the in-house sales team.
- Advise the in-house sales team on technical aspects of equipment.
- Take part in an on-call rota which is spread across all engineers within a company, in the case of an emergency.
As part of their work Field Service Engineers / Specialists often manage many clients within an assigned territory. The size of the territory is determined by their employer and takes into account variables such as which products the employer distributes, which regions and countries the company trades in and how many other Field Service Engineers / Specialists the company employs.
Customer sites vary from Universities, Hospitals, Pharmaceutical companies and Research sites, spanning both academia and commercial organisations, as such the ability to communicate with people at all technical levels is a necessity. Travelling (driving and flying) also plays a large part in the role, as you often have to travel to customer sites both within your territory and on occasion to cover other engineers territories in the case of holidays or sick leave.
The role of a Field Service Engineer / Specialist is a vital one in any organisation and offers the individual the opportunity to meet with a variety of people and deal with new challenges on a daily basis. Dependant on your experience and qualifications you could specialise in equipment used within a scientific or medical discipline or in a single company's product range.
If you are interested in looking for a Field Service Engineer job or Service Specialist job look at our Quick job search for details about positions we currently have available.
