How To Become An Engineering Professor: What It Is and Career Path

What is an engineering professor and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

2 min read

Quoted expert

Fabio Lanza

There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being an engineering professor. For example, did you know that they make an average of $26.27 an hour? That's $54,652 a year! Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 12% and produce 159,400 job opportunities across the U.S.

What general advice would you give to an engineering professor?

Fabio Lanza

Professor, Ashford University

I tell them not to expect that they can achieve the same, old-style academic career (like mine, for example). A tenure-track job in a research university to be clear. Those jobs exist but they are becoming rarer and rarer. I also tell them that if they forecast incurring in serious (or even non-serious) debt in order to get a PhD, they should not do it. They should not pursue that path at all. In the program, they should take all the chances they have to learn new skills, including skills that don't seem directly related to an academic career.

ScoreEngineering ProfessorUS Average

Salary

4.3

Avg. Salary $54,652

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

6.9

Growth rate 12%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

5.1

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.28%

Asian 14.22%

Black or African American 6.78%

Hispanic or Latino 9.69%

Unknown 4.87%

White 64.16%

Gender

female 15.07%

male 84.93%

Age - 46

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 46

Stress level

6.9

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

10.0

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

3.6

Work life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become an engineering professor

Explore engineering professor education requirements

Most common engineering professor degrees

Bachelor's

47.2 %

Master's

33.9 %

Doctorate

11.0 %

Start to develop specific engineering professor skills

Skills	Percentages
Engineering Courses	21.91%
Curriculum Development	16.85%
Abet	12.15%
Lab Reports	12.03%
Electronic Devices	8.45%

Complete relevant engineering professor training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 6-12 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New engineering professors learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as an engineering professor based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real engineering professor resumes.

Research engineering professor duties and responsibilities

Lead courses in the digital systems department, including classes focuse on FPGA and microcontrollers.
Design the course and draw up the syllabus.
Experiment with different surface chemistry to improve quality of yields -participate in poster session and presentation to faculty and graduate students.
Propose an automatic synthesis and performance characterization methodology for dynamic CMOS circuits & a novel floorplan optimization for hierarchical VLSI design.

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