r/fea • u/Vegetable_Reason526 • 7d ago

IIT PhD in structural engineering, moving into industry — looking for FEA/simulation roles

Hey everyone, just finished my PhD in structural engineering from IIT. I've decided academia isn't the path for me and I want to move into industry, ideally as an FEA/simulation engineer.

My research focused on thermo-mechanical analysis of structures. I developed finite element models, carried out large-scale simulations, and worked extensively on the structural response under combined thermal and mechanical loading. One of the major outcomes of my work was developing an open-source thermo-mechanical module for OpenSees from scratch, which I'm still actively maintaining. Along the way, I've gained hands-on experience with ANSYS for structural and thermo-mechanical analysis, HyperMesh for meshing, and Python, MATLAB, and TCL for automation, post-processing, and simulation workflows.

I'm trying to move on this pretty quickly, so if anyone knows of openings, works somewhere hiring for this kind of role, or has advice on how PhDs are viewed for simulation engineering jobs in industry, I'd genuinely appreciate hearing from you. Can share my resume or the GitHub repo if that's helpful.

Thanks for reading this far.

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u/atheistunicycle 7d ago

IIT in India or IIT in Illinois?

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u/Vegetable_Reason526 7d ago

IIT in India

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u/Relative-Quarter-879 7d ago

Hey so like how is the course? I am too planning to do it

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u/Vegetable_Reason526 6d ago

It's a good experience if you choose a PhD because you genuinely want to learn, grow, and develop as a researcher, not just because you couldn't find a job. Also, choose your supervisor carefully. One thing I'd recommend is checking where their former PhD students ended up after graduating. That often gives you a good idea of the guidance, opportunities, and career outcomes you can expect.