Boeing Engineer Trades Wrench for Blueprints After Shop-Floor to Fabrication Career
Andrew Salinas is graduating as an engineer from the Oregon Institute of Technology after completing Boeing's Learning Together program. He's moving into a manufacturing engineering role on his current team, where he'll be able to bridge design and assembly with his rare blend of shop-floor know-how and manufacturing planning insight.
Salinas credits support from his wife, Emily Soltys, who is also a Boeing engineer, for helping him achieve this goal. He says their shared background lets them have more technical discussions when he returns to the office, connecting practical shop-floor experience with engineering concepts.
His brother, another Boeing employee, joined the Mechanical Engineering program at OIT around the same time and graduated last year, providing encouragement and competition for Salinas to reach his goal. He believes that a combination of skills, formal education, and understanding shop-floor constraints can produce engineers who design practical, implementable solutions.