Engineer Average Salary

Engineers are considered to be the building blocks of the economy for the simple reason that they lay down the foundation, the raw materials for the rest of the economy to work with. Think of the civil engineer who builds the offices that people work in. Think of the software engineer who develops software applications that the world uses. Think of the electronics engineer who develops and troubleshoots electronic products. Any engineer for that matter lays down the basic foundation on which the rest of the economy can run.

Engineers and Their Pay

Now of course, there are several types of engineer as specified before, so let us discuss the average salary of each type of engineers.

Mechanical Engineer
Mechanical engineering, by far, is the broadest field of engineering which encompasses development, testing and troubleshooting all mechanical devices. Unless specified, mechanical engineers work on all products that are not electronic or related to computing. Mechanical engineers may be employed in pretty much any field with a job description which will include research, design, production, testing and troubleshooting products, which may be used by individuals or businesses. For their effort, the median mechanical engineer salary is pegged at US$ 74,920.

Software Engineer
Software engineering is again a pretty big field of work, encompassing, design, development, testing and research of software applications. What makes the field of software engineering so vast is the number of different types of software applications available right from gaming applications, design applications, database management applications to web applications. Software engineers may be employed to work on them all. For their effort, the software engineer may take home an average salary anywhere between US$ 57,411 - US$ 83,556.

Civil Engineer
Civil engineer oversees the design and construction of various buildings across the country such as office buildings, roads, airports, sewage lines, bridges, tunnels, dams etc. The skill of the civil engineer's job lies in correctly estimating the amount of pressure exerted by the various natural forces on the structures he creates and ensuring that the structures work well enough under the pressure. Civil engineering is one of the oldest professions in the world and the median salary for civil engineer is US$ 74,600.

Electrical Engineer
Electrical engineers are in charge of developing the various equipment which are run by electricity. Electrical engineers therefore work in close association with mechanical and software engineers, as a lot of their products are run on electricity and hence they need the specialized knowledge of the electrical engineer to run their stuff. An electrical engineer's median salary is US$ 82,160.

Electronics Engineer
Electronics engineer is in charge of developing, designing and troubleshooting different electronic products. Electronics engineering is often clubbed with a different specialization like communication, control systems, aviation electronics, etc. Just like software engineering, there are several different facets to the job of the electronics engineer and hence a specialization in one of these fields will be beneficial to the electronics engineer. The median electronics engineer salary is US$ 86,370.

As you can see, the job of an engineer, in whichever field he is can be one of the highest paying jobs. But then again, engineering is a pretty huge field of study and the job is pretty tough overall. So it is a well-deserved salary!