Product Design Engineering with Placement Year

Product Design Engineering is a discipline for people who want to create things: physical products and systems that combine good form with reliable function, designed with the rigour of engineering and the creativity of industrial design. It sits at the boundary between engineering and design, requiring practitioners who understand both the analytical demands of technical problem-solving and the human, aesthetic, and commercial considerations that determine whether a product is genuinely useful, attractive, and manufacturable at scale.

At Brunel University London, this four-year, full-time degree with a placement year is for creative thinkers who are comfortable with logical reasoning and who enjoy deeper analysis of functional and technical design challenges. The programme spans design and engineering, developing your ability to work across both disciplines in ways that produce products and systems with good form and function. You will learn to take ideas through from concept to realisation, working with manufacturing processes, materials, human factors, and commercial constraints.

The placement year is an integral part of the degree, giving you a full year of professional experience in product design or related engineering roles that connects your academic learning to the realities of professional practice.

Product design engineering graduates work across a wide range of sectors: consumer electronics, medical devices, household products, automotive design, industrial equipment, and the growing field of sustainable product development are all contexts where this dual engineering and design competence is valued. The placement year significantly enhances employability by providing direct industry credentials alongside academic qualification. Postgraduate study in product design, engineering design, or innovation management is available for those who wish to develop specialist expertise.