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The differences between customer engineers and telecom 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 telecom engineer. Additionally, a customer engineer has an average salary of $101,212, which is higher than the $81,384 average annual salary of a telecom engineer.
The top three skills for a customer engineer include customer service, technical problems and level agreements. The most important skills for a telecom engineer are voip, telephony, and telecommunication.
| Customer Engineer | Telecom Engineer | |
| Yearly salary | $101,212 | $81,384 |
| Hourly rate | $48.66 | $39.13 |
| Growth rate | 3% | 3% |
| Number of jobs | 44,709 | 33,530 |
| Job satisfaction | - | - |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 46% | Bachelor's Degree, 67% |
| Average age | 45 | 45 |
| 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.
Telecom engineers are engineering experts who design and install telecommunication equipment to ensure the transmission of high-quality data over wired or wireless communication. Due to their in-depth understanding of emerging technologies, these engineers are required to create solution designs such as drawings and design documents as well as offer guidance to reduce complexity and costs. They must identify and resolve any issues related to fiber optics and copper cables while setting up system monitoring to reduce equipment failure and incident response time. Telecom engineers are also required to operate and improve the telephony systems.
Customer engineers and telecom engineers have different pay scales, as shown below.
| Customer Engineer | Telecom Engineer | |
| Average salary | $101,212 | $81,384 |
| Salary range | Between $77,000 And $131,000 | Between $63,000 And $104,000 |
| Highest paying City | San Francisco, CA | Hayward, CA |
| Highest paying state | New Jersey | Rhode Island |
| Best paying company | PayPal | |
| Best paying industry | Start-up | Telecommunication |
There are a few differences between a customer engineer and a telecom engineer in terms of educational background:
| Customer Engineer | Telecom Engineer | |
| Most common degree | Bachelor's Degree, 46% | Bachelor's Degree, 67% |
| Most common major | Electrical Engineering | Electrical Engineering |
| Most common college | Stanford University | Northeastern University |
Here are the differences between customer engineers' and telecom engineers' demographics:
| Customer Engineer | Telecom Engineer | |
| Average age | 45 | 45 |
| Gender ratio | Male, 90.4% Female, 9.6% | Male, 86.2% Female, 13.8% |
| 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, 4.8% Unknown, 4.7% Hispanic or Latino, 11.3% Asian, 14.6% White, 64.4% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.2% |
| LGBT Percentage | 6% | 6% |