Mechanical Engineering graduate offered technician/process role. Good experience or career trap?

Hey guys,

I just graduated with a Mechanical Engineering degree in Australia and have been job hunting for a few months. I’ve managed to get a handful of interviews so far. My honours thesis was design and experimental-based, but I’m pretty open to working in any area of engineering.

I recently went for an interview that I’m a bit unsure about. The role is kind of a technician-type position. It starts off as a process worker role (preparing raw materials, checking products for defects, etc.), and then apparently progresses into a technician role where you’re managing multiple machines, making sure they run properly, doing maintenance/repairs, and identifying issues when things go wrong.

My concern is whether this type of role could “lock me in” as a technician and make it harder to transition into proper engineering roles later on.

On one hand, it feels more like a factory/operations job than engineering. On the other hand, I can see how it might give me solid hands-on experience and a better understanding of how machines actually run, fail, and can be improved.

Just wondering what people think, would this be worth taking for a year or two to build experience, or could it hurt my chances of getting into engineering roles down the track?