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Contract mechanical engineer vs staff engineer

The differences between contract mechanical engineers and staff engineers can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. It typically takes 4-6 years to become both a contract mechanical engineer and a staff engineer. Additionally, a staff engineer has an average salary of $107,530, which is higher than the $84,269 average annual salary of a contract mechanical engineer.

The top three skills for a contract mechanical engineer include solidworks, assembly drawings and autocad. The most important skills for a staff engineer are java, python, and architecture.

Contract mechanical engineer vs staff engineer overview

Contract Mechanical EngineerStaff Engineer
Yearly salary$84,269$107,530
Hourly rate$40.51$51.70
Growth rate2%2%
Number of jobs84,503277,011
Job satisfaction--
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 81%Bachelor's Degree, 74%
Average age4141
Years of experience66

Contract mechanical engineer vs staff engineer salary

Contract mechanical engineers and staff engineers have different pay scales, as shown below.

Contract Mechanical EngineerStaff Engineer
Average salary$84,269$107,530
Salary rangeBetween $64,000 And $110,000Between $69,000 And $167,000
Highest paying City-San Mateo, CA
Highest paying state-California
Best paying company-Flexport
Best paying industry-Telecommunication

Differences between contract mechanical engineer and staff engineer education

There are a few differences between a contract mechanical engineer and a staff engineer in terms of educational background:

Contract Mechanical EngineerStaff Engineer
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 81%Bachelor's Degree, 74%
Most common majorMechanical EngineeringElectrical Engineering
Most common collegeMichigan Technological UniversityMassachusetts Institute of Technology

Contract mechanical engineer vs staff engineer demographics

Here are the differences between contract mechanical engineers' and staff engineers' demographics:

Contract Mechanical EngineerStaff Engineer
Average age4141
Gender ratioMale, 91.5% Female, 8.5%Male, 87.9% Female, 12.1%
Race ratioBlack or African American, 3.3% Unknown, 4.6% Hispanic or Latino, 9.0% Asian, 13.9% White, 69.1% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.1%Black or African American, 3.1% Unknown, 4.5% Hispanic or Latino, 7.8% Asian, 16.8% White, 67.6% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.1%
LGBT Percentage5%5%

Differences between contract mechanical engineer and staff engineer duties and responsibilities

Contract mechanical engineer example responsibilities.

  • Provide mechanical design and sustaining engineering expertise to troubleshoot manufacturing defect trends and achieve a more robust and producible product.
  • Document as built drawing ECN's, ECO's, & ECR's into archive files.
  • Utilize SolidWorks and FEA analysis, and classical analysis to develop products.
  • Design of plastic injection & sheet metal components, perform FEA's and other design relate functions.
  • Upload files into PDM and EPDM.
  • Used SolidWorks PDM to save files.
  • Show more

Staff engineer example responsibilities.

  • Manage complete design flow: schematic creation, layout design, PCB fabrication, parts procurement and assembly.
  • Develop and manage technical procedures for quality control to comply with ISO laboratory accreditation.
  • Implement a process for reusing SilverStream Java custom reports and UI code on a ColdFusion server saving 1.5 man-years of development.
  • Develop and document communication stack API, enabling parallel development of third-party stack and UI interface.
  • Participate in relocating network infrastructure, server farm, network monitoring and IP telephony to another data center.
  • Web pages contain HTML and JavaScript.
  • Show more

Contract mechanical engineer vs staff engineer skills

Common contract mechanical engineer skills
  • Solidworks, 16%
  • Assembly Drawings, 6%
  • Autocad, 6%
  • Prototype, 4%
  • FEA, 4%
  • R, 4%
Common staff engineer skills
  • Java, 15%
  • Python, 10%
  • Architecture, 7%
  • Software Development, 4%
  • Project Management, 4%
  • API, 3%

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