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The differences between customer engineers and sales 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 customer engineer and a sales engineer. Additionally, a customer engineer has an average salary of $101,212, which is higher than the $93,727 average annual salary of a sales engineer.
The top three skills for a customer engineer include customer service, technical problems and level agreements. The most important skills for a sales engineer are pre sales, customer service, and sales process.
| Customer Engineer | Sales Engineer | |
| Yearly salary | $101,212 | $93,727 |
| Hourly rate | $48.66 | $45.06 |
| Growth rate | 3% | 6% |
| Number of jobs | 44,709 | 132,324 |
| Job satisfaction | - | 5 |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 46% | Bachelor's Degree, 74% |
| Average age | 45 | 44 |
| Years of experience | 6 | 6 |
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 sales engineer is responsible for assisting customers with their technical equipment and advanced scientific product needs. Sales engineers must have excellent knowledge of the scientific processes and component functions of the products they're selling to deliver presentations and orient the customers. Sales engineers' duties also include troubleshooting, identifying product defects, and upgrading systems for better optimization. They are also responsible for analyzing cost estimates documents, performing adjustments as needed, process payments, arranging deliveries, and settling customers' complaints by replacing damaged items or doing refunds.
Customer engineers and sales engineers have different pay scales, as shown below.
| Customer Engineer | Sales Engineer | |
| Average salary | $101,212 | $93,727 |
| Salary range | Between $77,000 And $131,000 | Between $66,000 And $132,000 |
| Highest paying City | San Francisco, CA | Washington, DC |
| Highest paying state | New Jersey | Virginia |
| Best paying company | Meta | |
| Best paying industry | Start-up | Technology |
There are a few differences between a customer engineer and a sales engineer in terms of educational background:
| Customer Engineer | Sales Engineer | |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 46% | Bachelor's Degree, 74% |
| Most common major | Electrical Engineering | Business |
| Most common college | Stanford University | Northwestern University |
Here are the differences between customer engineers' and sales engineers' demographics:
| Customer Engineer | Sales Engineer | |
| Average age | 45 | 44 |
| Gender ratio | Male, 90.4% Female, 9.6% | Male, 90.1% Female, 9.9% |
| 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, 1.7% Unknown, 6.2% Hispanic or Latino, 8.0% Asian, 7.1% White, 76.8% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.3% |
| LGBT Percentage | 6% | 7% |