There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a senior cost engineer. For example, did you know that they make an average of $39.3 an hour? That's $81,753 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 8% and produce 23,800 job opportunities across the U.S.
There are certain skills that many senior cost engineers have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed analytical skills, speaking skills and technical skills.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a senior cost engineer, we found that a lot of resumes listed 11.3% of senior cost engineers included cost engineering, while 10.4% of resumes included construction management, and 7.0% of resumes included cost analysis. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.
When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the senior cost engineer job title. But what industry to start with? Most senior cost engineers actually find jobs in the construction and manufacturing industries.
If you're interested in becoming a senior cost engineer, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 51.4% of senior cost engineers have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 37.6% of senior cost engineers have master's degrees. Even though most senior cost engineers have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a senior cost engineer. When we researched the most common majors for a senior cost engineer, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or master's degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on senior cost engineer resumes include high school diploma degrees or associate degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a senior cost engineer. In fact, many senior cost engineer jobs require experience in a role such as cost engineer. Meanwhile, many senior cost engineers also have previous career experience in roles such as project controls engineer or project manager.
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In addition to switching up your job search, it might prove helpful to look at a career path for your specific job. Now, what's a career path you ask? Well, it's practically a map that shows how you might advance from one job title to another. Our career paths are especially detailed with salary changes. So, for example, if you started out with the role of controls project manager you might progress to a role such as senior project manager eventually. Later on in your career, you could end up with the title senior vice president-operations.
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The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 11.3% of senior cost engineers listed cost engineering on their resume, but soft skills such as analytical skills and speaking skills are important as well.
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a senior cost engineer. The best states for people in this position are Washington, Colorado, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. Senior cost engineers make the most in Washington with an average salary of $103,361. Whereas in Colorado and Rhode Island, they would average $100,145 and $100,114, respectively. While senior cost engineers would only make an average of $94,917 in Massachusetts, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. Washington
$103,361
Avg. Salary
2. Colorado
$100,146
Avg. Salary
3. Massachusetts
$94,918
Avg. Salary