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

What is a senior automation engineer and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted experts

Aaron Napierala,

Christian Hansen Ph.D.

Senior automation engineers develop designs and configure the company's manufacturing or software processes for automation. Your job is to improve work proficiency while reducing the number of human employees needed for a task. You are to work with software design to provide solutions to automation problems. You are also expected to design hardware networks for job operations.

You will be actively involved in automation project management, estimating the cost of operations, and evaluating the number of employees for a job. As a senior automation engineer, you are to notify and advise company management about operations that could be automated. You are also to train as well as support the junior employees.

Knowledge of hardware and software application, experience using CAD software, strong leadership, and cooperation skills are required to be a successful senior automation engineer. Also, you should possess a degree in computer science or relevant fields. The average pay for a senior automation engineer is $115,389 annually.

What general advice would you give to a senior automation engineer?

Aaron Napierala

Assistant Professor of Computer Science, Defiance College

The most important advice I can offer, is to let them know to work toward something they are passionate about. Many people have the impression that CS is all about programming. While programming can, and does, deal with programming, an education in CS lays the foundation for students to work with technology, whatever that might be. If students are not passionate about what they are doing, I believe students would be hard-pressed to achieve their true potential. If you have a solid foundation, but nothing to build on top of that, where are you? This is why I always recommend students explore other areas, outside of CS, that they are excited to learn more about, to complement their technical knowledge. If students can't relate to people outside of their discipline, I think they will be limited on what they can do and ultimately not satisfied.

ScoreSenior Automation EngineerUS Average

Salary

7.8

Avg. Salary $107,866

Avg. Salary $59,228

Diversity

4.1

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.51%

Asian 11.99%

Black or African American 6.24%

Hispanic or Latino 8.82%

Unknown 4.70%

White 67.73%

Gender

female 13.13%

male 86.88%

Age - 43

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 - 43

Stress level

5.1

Stress level is manageable

7.1 - high

Complexity level

6.1

Complexity level is intermediate

7 - challenging

Work life balance

6.0

Work life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a senior automation engineer

Explore senior automation engineer education requirements

Most common senior automation engineer degrees

Bachelor's

70.7 %

Master's

18.4 %

Associate

5.7 %

Start to develop specific senior automation engineer skills

Skills	Percentages
Python	9.17%
Java	7.99%
PLC	5.90%
HMI	5.82%
Jenkins	4.48%

Complete relevant senior automation engineer training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 3-6 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New senior automation 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 senior automation engineer based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real senior automation engineer resumes.

Research senior automation engineer duties and responsibilities

Manage automate projects for daily regression run, data validation and project report analysis.
Perform feasibility analysis of applications to automate and feasibility analysis of smoke, regression and business scenario test suites.
Perform functional, UI, UAT, smoke, regression testing and record issues along with product enhancements.
Write new Perl modules or modify existing modules in the automation framework as per the new feature/functionality in Linux environment.

Get senior automation engineer experience

Generally, it takes 2-4 years to become a senior automation engineer. The most common roles before becoming a senior automation engineer include quality assurance engineer, automation engineer team lead and quality assurance analyst.

Prepare your senior automation engineer resume

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

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