Will getting a PhD in engineering aid in getting a research and development job in the industry

I would actually go in a different direction than the prior responders. I worked in engineering R&D for several years with a Bachelor's degree, then went back for my Master's and PhD. I found after graduation that I should probably have stopped with the Master's degree, because the PhD actually closed a lot of doors. Sure, it opened a few, but it closed far more.

Many companies have job reqs that can be filled easily by someone with a Master's degree, with slightly more difficulty with just a Bachelor's degree, and that don't actually require a PhD at all. If you happen to have a PhD, they assume that you will want a much higher salary than the position actually pays, and they simply cut your resume from the pile WITHOUT ASKING YOU about salary requirements. The automated software that companies use to determine eligibility for positions simply cuts your resume out of the pile if it has anything higher than a Master's degree, because that's the requirement that the hiring manager put into the system. Until and unless companies go back to mostly human-based HR rather than software-based HR (I doubt that this will ever happen), it's my opinion that not only does getting a PhD cut about 4-5 years off of your productive work span, it actually harms your chances of getting a decent job.

If you have a specific job in mind that absolutely requires a PhD, I'd think long and hard about whether a) it's worth that much time of your life, and b) if that job will still be identical in that time to what it is right now. Most of the people I know who have PhDs also say the same thing, so it's not only me. There are a few outliers, about 20%, who say that the PhD was a good decision, but I guess that's a gamble you'll need to decide on for yourself.

A side note on salaries: while the PhD does open up higher salaries, an additional 4-5 years of experience and raises does much the same thing, and your largest raises come from switching companies. So assume 4 years of raises and one or two early switches in companies before you settle into a position you love, that can be as much as a 2-2.25x multiplier to your starting salary (assuming a 5% raise each year, and a 35% raise for switching positions twice, which is pretty conservative). In contrast, the PhD might be worth an additional $10-15k up front, not including any student debt you might rack up. Also, that four extra years of contributing to a compound interest retirement plan makd a big difference later. All in all, the PhD is a trap unless you want to be a professor, and those positions are VERY few and far between.

I agree with Matthew's comments: there are definitely corporate research groups in which a PhD is strongly desired, and anything less than a Masters with several years of experience won't be considered at all; and a PhD is tough enough when you're still in academic mode; once you're in the workforce and/or have a family to worry about, the concentration required to complete a doctorate is very difficult to manage.

I worked at Philips Research for a number of years; it was one of those PhD-almost-required companies. I believe DEC/Compaq/HP Research were similar at the time; ditto AT&T Bell Labs (spent a summer there), IBM Research, etc. That was more than a decade ago, so things might well have changed...but I suspect that, if anything, it's only gotten more stringent, since corporate research groups have shrunk a lot since the 1990s.

Government research labs are a completely different thing; I'm not sure what most of their hiring practices are like. NASA Ames definitely had plenty of PhDs, and Fermilab and Argonne did as well, but that's pretty much expected for physics research.

As Eva said a PhD is not necessary but it could help quite a bit. This is more true if you are planning to attend a college without a great reputation -- a bachelors from a less known school can hurt, even if you're very good at whatever it is you do.

Even if you're very good and you've proved it to your supervisor, it can still matter. This is because the source of the R&D money (government or whatever) sometimes requires a list and short description of the engineers (college, degrees) that will work on the project and their awarding of $ will be based partially on this list. Employers know this, so they may prefer people that "look good" on that list.

Regarding the advice to wait 2 years before starting a PhD, it could go either way. I myself took similar advice and never got around to going back and getting a PhD. I regret this almost every day. Once you take a job and get decent money and new things come into your life it can be very hard to stop and go back to school.

I am working in R&D and have a Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Chemical Engineering. After finishing school, I started by working as a Process Engineer in manufacturing and did that for about 7 years before I moved to R&D. Working in manufacturing gets you a better understanding of what you need to do in R&D to get to a solution that can be commercialized.

A PhD is more likely to be in R&D but a Bachelor's degree is enough to get into it. If you decide to pursue a PhD, I recommend working for at least a year or two before starting the PhD. It will help give you more perspective in the research you do.