Vehicle Dynamics/Ride Handling Engineering - Career Advice Needed

Hi all,

Looking for some career advice here. A quick rundown of my background: I finished undergrad about 10 years ago in Mechanical Engineering and began my career at one of the American big 3 OEMs as a Suspension Product Engineer. My role at the time was more on the "execution" side of things as I mostly worked with vehicle dynamicsts to achieve some of their ride and handling targets (e.g. re-valving the shocks to get different damping curves, stiffening up suspension bushing, make adjustments to roll bar diameter, etc.)

I went on a couple ride-tuning trips with the dynamics guys just to observe and get a better understanding of some of the changes we were making. However, whilst some of these changes may be obvious to seasoned vehicle dynamics engineers, I unfortunately was not able to pick up some of the more subtle differences in ride and handling when we did some A to B comparisons. I was in this role for about 3 years and due to personal reasons had to find another engineering job that was completely unrelated to chassis/suspension/dynamics.

I recently came across an opportunity to interview for a ride and handling engineer position at another automotive OEM, and honestly this is something I've been wanting to get back into ever since my first job. However, the hiring manager has indicated that they likely will not have too much time to train me, but the expectation for me is still to hit the ground running ASAP if hired.

Outside of work, I often go to autocross/track days and play with some of the suspension settings on my track car. To me, I'm able to pick up more vehicle attributes in high performance driving scenarios. Whereas I'm not as attuned to recognizing some of the secondary ride (higher frequency) characteristics under normal driving scenarios.

So reddit vehicle dynamcists, do you think getting a good feel for the car or becoming more attuned to vehicle behavior is something that I can pick up quickly? Or maybe I need someone to ride with me and point out the subtleties and feelings I should be looking out for?

My past experience of going on those tuning trips and getting a bit lost has not given me great confidence going into this interview. So just looking for some industry insight on this matter.

Thanks in advance!