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The differences between customer engineers and customer quality engineers can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. While it typically takes 4-6 years to become a customer engineer, becoming a customer quality engineer takes usually requires 2-4 years. Additionally, a customer engineer has an average salary of $101,212, which is higher than the $82,508 average annual salary of a customer quality engineer.
The top three skills for a customer engineer include customer service, technical problems and level agreements. The most important skills for a customer quality engineer are corrective action, product quality, and customer satisfaction.
| Customer Engineer | Customer Quality Engineer | |
| Yearly salary | $101,212 | $82,508 |
| Hourly rate | $48.66 | $39.67 |
| Growth rate | 3% | 10% |
| Number of jobs | 44,709 | 86,365 |
| Job satisfaction | - | - |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 46% | Bachelor's Degree, 72% |
| Average age | 45 | 42 |
| Years of experience | 6 | 4 |
A customer engineer provides technical support to organizations having issues with their products or services. Duties and responsibilities may vary depending on the sector, but generally include diagnosing and troubleshooting technical problems with products, performing tests, upgrades and diagnostics to prevent delay or downtime caused by-product issues, and keeping updated reports outlining the problems and measures taken to resolve them. A customer engineer is also responsible for discussing service contracts and their benefits with clients.
A customer quality engineer is accountable for all in-process batches with quality issues. You will be responsible for minimizing variations with quality processes and supporting all customer root cause audits, investigations, and visits. Other duties include processing field audits, assisting in new product launches, and participating in the control process and product quality planning. In addition, you are expected to relay customer feedback and expectations on product quality to the quality management team. You are also expected to conduct training the team in identifying and creating methodologies to solve quality issues.
Customer engineers and customer quality engineers have different pay scales, as shown below.
| Customer Engineer | Customer Quality Engineer | |
| Average salary | $101,212 | $82,508 |
| Salary range | Between $77,000 And $131,000 | Between $64,000 And $106,000 |
| Highest paying City | San Francisco, CA | Santa Clara, CA |
| Highest paying state | New Jersey | California |
| Best paying company | Apple | |
| Best paying industry | Start-up | Technology |
There are a few differences between a customer engineer and a customer quality engineer in terms of educational background:
| Customer Engineer | Customer Quality Engineer | |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 46% | Bachelor's Degree, 72% |
| Most common major | Electrical Engineering | Electrical Engineering |
| Most common college | Stanford University | Northwestern University |
Here are the differences between customer engineers' and customer quality engineers' demographics:
| Customer Engineer | Customer Quality Engineer | |
| Average age | 45 | 42 |
| Gender ratio | Male, 90.4% Female, 9.6% | Male, 75.7% Female, 24.3% |
| Race ratio | Black or African American, 4.8% Unknown, 4.7% Hispanic or Latino, 11.1% Asian, 14.5% White, 64.8% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.2% | Black or African American, 4.7% Unknown, 3.9% Hispanic or Latino, 11.6% Asian, 13.0% White, 66.5% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.2% |
| LGBT Percentage | 6% | 4% |