Before we review when it makes sense to outsource your product engineering. Let’s take a step back and look at successful companies reasoning for outsourcing their product development to Design Catapult.
- Throughput is problem. Our firm has noticed an increase the past few years of funded startups to enterprise company’s having a shortage of product engineers (mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, firmware). Clients do not have the time to go vet new engineers for important and time sensitive projects. Rather they look to our experienced experts with a proven track record. Hiring top engineer talent has become significantly difficult the past few years due to shortage in available talent and salary ranges are not in range of small-to-mid-size R&D teams.
- Pressure of time to market. Ideas have an expiration date and so does your time to market. The ability to go fast, (without mistakes or suffering quality) having a team of expert product development designers and engineers that have a proven track record for several decades under one roof is hard to come by. Most clients are trying to keep on track of established R&D pipeline targets, and are hiring Design Catapult for time sensitive projects to be complete on time (and done correctly the first time). Having a product development agency like Design Catapult allows you to expedite every project that have been on pause while critical projects have become a distraction.
- Significant savings with experienced teams. Per our observation above, “Quality, Time, Budget and Speed” are the problems our clients are being faced with. Financial savings of knowing your product development is going to have a great outcome and not go through several rounds of revisions due to lack of experience, quality control or ignoring critical details is usually enough for most CTOs or technical leads to outsource their product design and product engineering.
Shortage of Engineers:
The shortage of engineers in the U.S. has reached critical levels—and industries reliant on engineering talent are feeling the impact. Business and engineering leaders are facing big challenges in talent acquisition and retention.
“There are not enough U.S. citizens or permanent residents to meet the workforce needs of engineering firms,” the American Council of Engineering Companies wrote in a letter to President Biden in 2023. The letter urged action on the workforce issues impacting the engineering and design services industry.
Significance of Shortage?
- With demand far exceeding supply, unemployment rates among new engineering graduates hover near all-time lows. In January 2024, general unemployment was at 3.7%, but if you focused on engineering specifically, the rate was a meager 1.6%.
- According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the shortfall of engineers will exceed six million between 2016 and 2026.
- Given the gap between new engineering roles that are being created and new engineers entering the US market, almost one third of engineering roles are expected to remain unfilled each year through at least 2030.
Solution:
It’s important to attract and retain the best engineering talent. But of equal or greater importance is being skilled at augmenting your engineering team with external resources.
We encourage you to ask yourself the following questions and can have a conversation for outside perspective:
- What type of design or engineering do you need?
- When looking to augment your engineering team with external talent what qualities are you looking for?
- Is your team improved by this external talent?
- Will hiring a product development firm expedite your R&D timeline and free throughput?
- Who would manage internally bringing on a product development agency to excellerate your next project?
Most of these questions are fairly simple to answer, others need some consideration. We would welcome a conversation about your specific situation and see how we could help your team.
Design Catapult is a full-service product development firm located in Orange County, California. For the past 20 years, they have provided best in class product design and product engineering services for just about every sector, while growing a reputation for specializing in medical-healthcare, technology-hardware and wellness consumer product lines.
Learn about our product design and development services at designcatapult.com/services
