How to Build an Engineering Design Team Remotely?

A remote engineering design team provides an opportunistic window for companies to connect with as many design engineers as possible globally. Consequently, when global experts work together as a team, a specific project becomes leaner and smarter. Engineering design involves the design, development, and manufacturing of any kind of products, systems, or infrastructure which is typically the building block of any project. 

Hence, it is undeniable that this team needs the best minds from around the world to put in a collaborative effort. Organizations are thus constantly attracted to this flexibility and global collaboration and are putting efforts into hiring a remote design engineering team. 

One of the most important things to ponder about a remote design engineering team is the availability and access to talent without any location barrier. This is accompanied by yet another attraction which is significant cost savings through reduced operational expenses. 

A major notion of business expansion is when a company plans to launch a non-IT product internationally, there is no better way to judge the credibility of the product than testing it in the target foreign location. This is where the remote engineering product development team takes the territorial and cultural advantage of being natives and checks the usability and market-readiness of the product. Thus, our aim for this blog is to make our readers aware of all the factors mentioned above and help them get the right direction about expanding a remote engineering design team.            

Benefits of Building a Remote Engineering Design Team   

Assembling a remote engineering design team remotely comprises a multitude of benefits for organizations to look forward to. Starting from a diverse talent pool to substantial cost savings, the list is endless. Let us take a closer look at the most significant ones. 

Availability of Global Talent

Skills should have no barrier, especially when it comes to creative minds. Hiring remote design engineering teams allows companies to hunt for creative talent from anywhere around the world that is best fitted for the company’s demands and culture. It also gives a unique and innovative touch to the remote design engineering team and the overall project when employees from different locations put their minds together to explore and create something. 

Substantial Cost Savings

Running a team remotely saves up a significant chunk of operational costs such as office space leases, office supplies and utilities, etc. Another major factor that saves on the company budget while hiring a remote team is flexible salaries for employees residing in countries with lower living costs yet maintaining quality.   

Read More: Cost of Hiring Remote Employees in India: A Complete Guide

Cultural and Territorial Advantage

A remote team hired from a different country will definitely have a better cultural understanding and knowledge of local market dynamics than the company situated remotely. This helps the companies to deeply understand customer psychology and resonate with the local audience in a much better way. It also helps with the customization of local marketing messages, including product features and languages preferred by the local demographics, and building an inclusive product design that caters to the local audience well.   

Read more about the benefits of remote teams 

How Does a Design Engineering Team Work Remotely?

The workflow of a remote design engineering team involves a large set and subsets of tasks starting from conducting research to creation and implementation of products. To understand how a remote design engineering team proves itself to be highly efficient, it is important to have a clear idea of the day-to-day process, tools, and software it works with. 

In the first phase, research and conceptualization, the design engineers collect data on the existing problems and solutions, detect the customer needs, and experiment with different design ideas. They use major interfaces like Google Scholar, patent databases, morphological analysis, sketching and mind maps, etc. for this phase. This is followed by the feasibility assessment phase where the team indulges in analyzing the prudency and viability of the chosen ideas. The techniques used by the team are cost-benefit analysis, SWOT analysis, and technical feasibility studies.  

Then comes the design requirements phase where the design engineers are expected to prepare a detailed list of user demands and criteria the product design should meet. They utilize methods like quality function deployment (QFD), use case diagrams, and requirements traceability matrix. In the next phase, preliminary and detailed design, the team works on creating the initial design solutions and developing extensive design documentation based on the requirements. CAD software like AutoCAD, simulation software like ANSYS, SolidWorks, Bill of Materials (BOM), and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) are all implemented in this phase.    

In the next process, production planning and tool design, the team plans and decides on the necessary tools for designing and manufacturing. They make use of tools like Gantt charts, CATIA, and Computer-Aided Manufacturing (CAM). In the final stage, the engineering design team focuses on manufacturing the product according to the desired design. Major tools in this phase include CNC machines, 3D printers, and CMM machines.

Now, retrospecting all the tools and software used by a remote engineering design team, we can easily state the fact that a laptop, proper technical infrastructure, and a quiet place to focus will suffice the requirements of the job. This leads organizations to hire and manage employees remotely for their engineering product design and development teams without the need for any physical presence of the teams in the office location.

Concerns About Building a Remote Engineering Design Team

While remote teams come with advantages in abundance, hiring and managing a team remotely does not always sail smoothly. Remote teams bring some ambiguities to day-to-day operations, so let us understand how.

• Technical Conundrums: Constant and efficient functioning of all the important tools and software required by a remote engineering design team is a challenging task per se. Remote engineering product development teams require constant collaboration among the employees to track real-time progress and any amount of technical glitch can compromise the entire ongoing project.

• Security Threat: Maintaining a strict and efficient security channel remotely to protect the company’s sensitive data and intellectual properties is difficult and it is even more difficult to keep up the momentum constantly without a breach.
• Effective Employee Management: Handling employee-related tasks remotely, be it HR or administrative, can be quite daunting. There is so much more to running a remote team successfully than just hiring and onboarding employees into the team. It is safe to say that HR teams situated remotely can’t always fathom what is going on with their engineering product development teams which leads to the gradual downfall of the remote development teams.

Get more insights about the challenges of cross-border remote working   

How to Successfully Build a Remote Engineering Design Team through EOR?

To address the above-mentioned concerns and expand an engineering design team remotely, many companies are now approaching the lesser-known concept of employer of record. Though relatively new, this method of employment and remote team management has risen to be one of the most efficient and budget-friendly strategies in the past decade. 

From hiring and onboarding absolute expert professionals into the remote teams, handling their payroll process, taking care of employee benefits, and providing competent IT support, to conducting exit interviews for the remote employees, an EOR does it all.

An EOR also assists the expanding business in building the proper infrastructure required to set up a remote team internationally. This includes the availability of the above-mentioned tools and software required by the design engineering team, high-speed internet connection, prompt helpdesk, and other infrastructural assistance.

Now the real question here is how to decide on a particular EOR that is best suited for a company when there are so many lucrative offers out there in the market provided by various EOR companies. The specific set of checkpoints a company should remember before selecting an EOR partner are jotted down below. 

• The EOR is capable of hiring a remote engineering design team that satisfies the project goals, demands, and purpose of the company.
• The EOR is experienced enough in working with the engineering design and development sector and is capable of providing multiple customer testimonials for reference.
  
• The EOR has stringent security measures when it comes to company data and provides proper IT support to each remote employee for smooth and easy operations.
• Last but the most important, the EOR provides a transparent pricing structure with no hidden costs and it fits the desired company budget.  

Know More: How to Choose the Right Employer of Record (EOR)?

Conclusion

To have a real-life example of an EOR handholding an organization during its’ remote engineering product design and development team expansion process, let us refer to the time when Remunance assisted an American architectural business named Excelize owned by two software professionals. Excelize came into a partnership with Remunance with a sheer belief that Remunance will be the guiding light in its team expansion journey in India. 

Rightly so, the in-house team of Remunance exhaustively understood the needs and requirements of Excelize and helped them build a robust talent network in India. Remunance provided 360-degree support to the team of expert architects and draftsmen and proved to be a highly valuable asset for Excelize.