Engineers are some of the best-paid professionals in the United States. Why? It’s because they do everything from designing your car to programming your phone. There are over a dozen different types of engineering, and each has its own scale. A good engineer has a much easier time earning 6 figures than most other professions. Here are the Highest Engineering Salaries:
How much money do engineers make?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics(BLS) states that engineers earn $50,000 more than the median yearly wage of all other workers. So, engineers usually earn more than most other professions. This is due to their job’s high requirements.
Salaries also vary widely depending on the type of engineer. On average, mechanical engineers earn $87,370, while ecology and mining engineers receive $92,250 per annum. Engineering salaries earn even more at $140,760.
Why do engineers make so much money?
An Engineer role requires difficult technical skills. Every type of engineering has its own level of technical difficulty and requires different skills. Therefore, all of them require an excellent understanding of Mathematics and Physics.
Experienced engineers also develop highly valued and difficult-to-obtain problem-solving skills. An engineer usually can solve any of the following problems:
- How to build a structurally sound bridge?
- How to choose the best material to build aircraft components?
- How to organize a city’s road system to reduce traffic?
The Highest-Paying Engineering Jobs
These are the 10 highest-paid engineering jobs:
Mechanical Engineer
These engineers design, build and maintain any object with moving pieces, like a car. Mechanical engineers study complex topics like material science, thermodynamics, and mechanics.
The average mechanical engineer earns $85,292, while top earners net over $100,00 annually.
Civil Engineer
Civil engineers are employed in everything from construction to structural and transportation engineering. As such, they’re among the most valued in the United States. An American civil engineer receives $87,539 on average, making it one of the country’s best engineering fields.
3. Chemical Engineer
Chemical engineers are employed by manufacturing and pharmaceutical companies. Their skill set includes knowing how to transform raw materials and chemicals into useful products.
Chemical engineering is reputed for being difficult. Chemical engineers are taught everything from mathematics, chemistry, and physics to biology. Experienced chemical engineers are also highly valued, with a median salary of $90,560.
4. Electrical Engineer
Electrical engineers know how to design electrical systems, develop commercial electrical power, and work on national power grids. As such, they’re one of the most widely employable types of engineers. They also have an average starting salary of $92,538. Electrical engineers will be paid even higher in the future because of rising demand.
5. Biomedical Engineer
Biomedical engineers bridge the gap between medicine and engineering. So, they’re employed to develop tools for diagnosing and treating medical conditions. Biomedical engineers study both biology and chemistry courses as undergraduates.
Their importance to the medical industry grants them a starting average salary of $95,548. It’s even common for experienced biomedical engineers to earn over $130,000 yearly.
6. Computer Engineer
Computer engineering refers to engineers who design and create physical hardware for computers, like hard drives and CPUs.
Note: computer engineers don’t write code or create software. They only work on hardware.
Computer engineers usually learn everything from computer science to electrical engineering and programming. Since their skills are so important for our tech-driven world, they also earn a high annual starting salary of $102,053.
7. Aerospace Engineer
Aerospace engineers design and build both aircraft and spacecraft. They’re actual rocket scientists. They learn everything from aerodynamics to propulsion and avionics. So it’s a very technical field where employers demand high academic qualifications, too. Aerospace engineers are paid an average salary of $106,212.
8. Petroleum Engineer
Petroleum engineers are experts in extracting oil and other precious natural resources from the ground. Gas and energy companies depend on petroleum engineers to safely extract raw materials. This is a niche but well-paid engineering field. The average petroleum engineer receives a starting salary of $114,825.
9. Software Engineer
Software engineers write code and build the software we use on our devices. This is one of the most lucrative engineering fields because of how valuable good programmers are. Becoming a software engineer requires exceptional programming and problem-solving skills.
Their high value gives software engineers an average salary of $127,263.
10. Data Engineer
Data engineers build analytical infrastructure for organizations. They also prepare data for operational and analytical uses, so this is considered an IT field. Data engineers usually study computer science or information technology as undergraduates before specializing in data science in postgraduate studies.
Data engineers are the highest-paid engineers, with an annual average salary of $136,626.
Wrapping everything up, engineering is a very highly-paid field. A good engineer has very valuable and hard skills that many employers want. As a result, the highest-paid engineers receive over $130,000 on average.