What is a typical raise for an engineer?

 engineer job salaries

As we mentioned earlier, the period between 2013 and 2017 saw salaries rise by a cumulative percentage that was just higher (5.6% to 5.3%) than 2018 alone. Over that five-year period, the average salary increased around $6,200, compared to an average $6,300 raise in 2018.

The financial situation of the average automation engineer got a nice boost in 2018. As the salary of the average automation professional rose for the fifth consecutive year, our salary survey found incremental growth greater than 5% for the first time since 2010 (5.3% in the U.S., 1.5% globally). So are today's automation engineers finally getting their due? A bigger boost in salaries has been anticipated for quite some time. Manufacturing and automation analysts have long pointed toward a looming skills gap, estimating more than 3 million jobs will need to be filled in the next decade. As this year's survey shows, that certainly seems reflected in automation salaries, as a career in the industry is increasingly becoming a financially rewarding decision.

With the rise of the Industrial Internet of Things and increasingly connected technology requiring advanced considerations in both cybersecurity and system design, the role of today's engineer is more crucial and complex than ever. Yet for the past few years of this survey, we saw only modest gains in salary. From 2013 to 2017, the average salary rose a total of 5.6%, just barely above the gain for 2018 alone. Some of the most prominent gains were:

• Average salaries for entry-level professionals in the U.S. (fewer than two years of experience) increased 13.7%.
• Average salaries for professionals with graduate school/advanced degrees increased 7.2%.
• The two largest raises, proportionally, went to engineering consulting (9.9%) and process/plant/manufacturing engineering (10.7%).

While we still have not seen any signs that the labor gap is being bridged, we can say that the increasing demand for automation professionals has finally taken that significant step up that we have been expecting for years. With the need for experienced professionals still growing, we anticipate the demand to remain strong for engineers for the foreseeable future, with a great deal of opportunity for young graduates and those who are interested in a STEM career.

Five Factors of Salary Determination

Through our years of conducting this salary survey, we have identified the five major factors that determine salary:

• geographic region
• job function
• level of education
• industry segment
• years of experience

Our survey collected more than 1,900 responses from automation professionals located around the world, including 1,290 from the U.S. Salaries from country to country and region to region vary greatly, so our analysis separates the U.S. responses in order to avoid skewing results. All of the results quoted in this article, other than average salary by region of the world, represent U.S. responses only.