Mechanical Engineering Salary Insights
Survey Demographics
This analysis encompasses responses from 1,023 U.S.-based mechanical engineers, collected throughout 2024. The sample shows strong representation from early and mid-career professionals:
- 43% with 0-4 years of experience
- 35% with 5-9 years of experience
The primary industries represented are:
- Aerospace/Defense (29%)
- Manufacturing (28%)
- Technology (9%)
- MEP/HVAC (7%)
Categories with fewer than five responses have been consolidated under “Other”.
Survey Results
Pay Components
Degree Comparison
Industry Comparison
Title Comparison
Remote Work Comparison
Pay Components
Degree Comparison
Title Comparison
Remote Work Comparison
Compensation Trends
Key findings from our compensation analysis reveal several significant trends:
Compensation Structure
While base salaries follow a relatively consistent pattern, total compensation shows greater variation due to bonuses, stock grants, and other incentives. This implies that high salaries are driven primarily by bonuses, stock grants, and other forms of compensation.
Career progression typically follows this pattern:
- Rapid growth in early career years
- Mean salary of $143,000 at 10 years
- Slower growth to $168,000 at 20 years
- Limited data beyond 20 years suggests a salary plateau below $200,000
Education and Certification Premium
Educational attainment and professional certifications show measurable impact:
- Masters degree holders earn substantially more than those with Bachelors degrees. Mean earnings for engineers with Masters degree ranged from 10-30% higher than those with Bachelors degrees.
- Professional certifications (primarily PE and Six Sigma) correlate with moderately higher earnings at most career levels. Median earnings are used in this comparison due to several high earners skewing the results for non-certificate holders. The table below shows the differences in mean and median earnings between the groups.
| Group | Mean Premium | Mean % | Median Premium | Median % |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0-2 YOE | -$573 | -0.65% | $0 | 0.00% |
| 3-5 YOE | $3,977 | 3.84% | $6,000 | 6.12% |
| 6-10 YOE | $5,046 | 3.90% | $10,000 | 8.33% |
| 11-15 YOE | -$5,868 | -3.58% | $8,000 | 5.44% |
| 15+ YOE | -$4,008 | -2.15% | $9,000 | 5.52% |
Industry Impact
Most industries show similar compensation ranges, with two notable exceptions. Comparing mean compensation at the 15 year mark:
- Technology: $339,000
- Oil & Gas: $210,000
- Aerospace/Defense: $165,000
- Overall mean: $158,000 (excluding Tech)
- MEP/Construction: $145,000
Note: Oil & Gas data is based on a limited sample of 29 respondents.
Specialization Effects
Specialization choice significantly influences earnings:
- Systems Engineers and Engineering Managers lead with mean earnings of $172,000 at 15 years
- Manufacturing Engineers and Design Engineers show lower earnings trajectories (mean earnings of $130,000 and $142,000 respectively at 15 years)
Remote Work Trends
Remote work opportunities show a strong correlation with experience level. Given that 78% of respondents have less than ten years of experience, we focused our analysis on the experience-flexibility relationship:
- Entry-level positions (0-2 years): 52% fully in-office, 3% fully remote
- Experienced roles (10+ years): 29% fully in-office, 16% fully remote
- Hybrid arrangements remain relatively stable across experience levels above entry level
- Remote work flexibility increases significantly with years of experience
This data suggests a clear trend toward increased work arrangement flexibility as engineers advance in their careers.
Future analyses will try to address variations between industries and specializations also. However the current dataset skewed too much to early career engineers to provide an accurate analysis.
Ongoing Work
We hope this provides you with valuable insights, and that you will use those insights to advance your career and ensure you are fairly compensated. For future surveys, we plan to implement several improvements, including
- a job satisfaction assessment
- refined categorizations
- more comprehensive remote work data
- a cost of living factor
- deviation and percentile range information
- Interactive tools
We will also expand our data collection methods to ensure broader representation and a larger data set to allow more refined analysis.
If you found this information useful or insightful please contribute by participating in our survey or sharing this site with your colleagues.
If you have any suggestions or comments please email us at [email protected]