A day in the life of... an Additive Manufacturing Engineer

Overview

TCT's "A Day in the Life of..." series has been launched to show college and university alumni what career opportunities in additive manufacturing (AM) are available. In this instalment, Vasia Papadopoulou of Stratasys explains the role of an Additive Manufacturing Engineer at Stratasys’ Additive Manufacturing Center in Baden-Baden, Germany.

Role and responsibilities

Vasia oversees quality control at the benchmarking centre and quickly supports efforts across the wider AM workflow. The facility’s team helps customers bring ideas to fruition, assists with part design for AM, and returns sample prints based on the parameter sets they’re working with.

She participates in all stages of the workflow: conceptualisation with customers, the introduction to printing, the operation of the machines, 3D design and quality control. She also helps customers implement additive manufacturing into their production.

Her daily routine often starts before 7am to process benchmarking requests; prints may run overnight, and she updates customers on progress when they log in. After checking in with the team and having coffee, she coordinates with colleagues internationally, connects with customers via the sales team, and liaises with marketing ahead of trade shows. She also collaborates with regional technical engineers to provide user feedback on machine performance and address any bugs.

She may host tours for prospective customers and participates in trade shows such as Formnext, discussing customer needs and how AM can provide solutions.

She contributes to sample part designs and may help address broader product design questions.

Q. Why work in 3D printing?

VP: 3D printing is the technology of the future, with growing adoption across production environments, and offers meaningful career opportunities in the coming years.

The role beyond the title

Vasia views her role as bringing ideas to life—moving beyond simply producing a printed part to developing a business case for additive manufacturing. She leads the quality-control process for benchmarks at the Baden-Baden center and reports to the manager of the facility. She created the overall process and the customer information pamphlets, including printing parameters and a quality-control checklist.

She stays in contact with application engineering and sales to ensure alignment, and has undertaken additional training such as Customer Service Engineer training for PolyJet technology, enabling her to fix machines on-site and calibrate systems within defined limits.

When time allows, she follows industry news and keeps a running list of ideas for future part designs and prints.

Q. If you could give your younger self career advice?

VP: Bring hobbies into the job as soon as possible, keep them there, and always try to reach higher, because anything is possible. She notes that she never imagined she would be hired by Stratasys, but here she is.

The pathway

Vasia has a creative mindset that suits a career as an additive manufacturing engineer. She emphasizes communication with colleagues and customers, and being multilingual. She studied Mechanical Engineering at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (diploma in 2019) and has held roles in Greece in mechanical design and engineering before joining Stratasys. She pursued language studies in Japanese and German, which supported her move to Germany for the Stratasys opportunity.

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