There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being an aerodynamics engineer. For example, did you know that they make an average of $40.4 an hour? That's $84,038 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 2% and produce 1,100 job opportunities across the U.S.
There are certain skills that many aerodynamics engineers have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed analytical skills, business skills and writing skills.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be an aerodynamics engineer, we found that a lot of resumes listed 17.8% of aerodynamics engineers included matlab, while 17.5% of resumes included aerospace, and 14.7% of resumes included computational fluid dynamics. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.
When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the aerodynamics engineer job title. But what industry to start with? Most aerodynamics engineers actually find jobs in the technology and manufacturing industries.
If you're interested in becoming an aerodynamics engineer, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 49.2% of aerodynamics engineers have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 35.4% of aerodynamics engineers have master's degrees. Even though most aerodynamics engineers have a college degree, it's impossible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become an aerodynamics engineer. When we researched the most common majors for an aerodynamics engineer, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or master's degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on aerodynamics engineer resumes include doctoral degree degrees or diploma degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become an aerodynamics engineer. In fact, many aerodynamics engineer jobs require experience in a role such as engineering internship. Meanwhile, many aerodynamics engineers also have previous career experience in roles such as research assistant or engineer.
Tell us your goals and we'll match you with the right jobs to get there.
As you move along in your career, you may start taking on more responsibilities or notice that you've taken on a leadership role. Using our career map, an aerodynamics engineer can determine their career goals through the career progression. For example, they could start out with a role such as engineer, progress to a title such as project engineer and then eventually end up with the title senior project engineer.
Tell us your goals and we'll match you with the rights job to get there.
Use Zippia's Salary Calculator to see how your pay matches up.
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The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 17.8% of aerodynamics engineers listed matlab on their resume, but soft skills such as analytical skills and business skills are important as well.
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as an aerodynamics engineer. The best states for people in this position are California, Alaska, Missouri, and Maryland. Aerodynamics engineers make the most in California with an average salary of $111,884. Whereas in Alaska and Missouri, they would average $101,272 and $92,471, respectively. While aerodynamics engineers would only make an average of $92,013 in Maryland, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. California
$111,885
Avg. Salary
2. Alaska
$101,273
Avg. Salary
3. Texas
$90,452
Avg. Salary