How To Become A Professional Engineer: What It Is and Career Path

What is a professional engineer and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted experts

Karen Panetta Ph.D.,

Brian Denton Ph.D.

Candidates in this job family are assigned responsibility for providing engineering expertise, guidance, and technical assistance to state agencies, consultants, and the public. Incumbents accomplish this by performing professional engineering tasks and by managing, reviewing, and evaluating the work of consultants, contractors, and facility operators.

For this job, they should know engineering principles and techniques like engineering planning, engineering equipment and materials, and some other specialized subjects.

Employers seek someone with a bachelor's or master's degree in any engineering or related fields alongside an engineering license; however, someone with experience is hired more often.

What general advice would you give to a professional engineer?

Karen Panetta Ph.D.

Dean of Graduate Education, School of Engineering, Tufts University

This is a different generation of graduates, and many employers are going to want to know how you dealt with and responded to the COVID crisis. The response to this tells so much about an individual's ability to deal with and overcome adversity. They seek innovative, upbeat, and definite answers that show that students are prepared for anything and will be resourceful.

They are also looking to see what personal actions and community involvement students participated in. For instance, online tutoring for kids whose parents needed help homeschooling their kids while they worked, or using their engineering skills to 3D print PPE for local nursing homes and other at-risk populations.

Every engineering student comes out with technical skills, but the ones that used them, and showed their compassion for humanity, will be the ones that companies will want to hire.

ScoreProfessional EngineerUS Average

Salary

6.7

Avg. Salary $86,348

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

7.3

Growth rate 7%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

6.5

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.31%

Asian 12.55%

Black or African American 3.98%

Hispanic or Latino 11.67%

Unknown 4.69%

White 66.80%

Gender

female 12.54%

male 87.46%

Age - 39

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 - 39

Stress level

7.3

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

8.3

Complexity level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work life balance

5.1

Work life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a professional engineer

Explore professional engineer education requirements

Most common professional engineer degrees

Bachelor's

77.3 %

Master's

13.5 %

Associate

5.2 %

Start to develop specific professional engineer skills

Skills	Percentages
Civil Engineering	11.11%
Project Management	8.92%
PE	8.26%
Revit	4.59%
Civil 3D	4.34%

Complete relevant professional engineer training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 6-12 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New professional engineers 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 a professional engineer based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real professional engineer resumes.

Research professional engineer duties and responsibilities

Manage custom product design & generate all require documentation for both customer and manufacturing groups using AutoCAD rel.
Create transmittals & submittals in Prolog.
Perform fit checks design using SolidWorks.
Review site plans for compliance with NCDOT policy.

Prepare your professional engineer resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your professional engineer resume.

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