As the name implies, a senior engineering manager is an executive position within the engineering department of a company or an organization whose role is to lead the team in conceiving, building, and providing some sort of product or service, usually in a digital format.
The person in this role is responsible for managing projects in a way that garners a productive but healthy work environment without straying from the given budget or timeline, for the experimentation and development of new products and processes, and the hiring and the subsequent training of new employees. They must also report progress to higher management and even stakeholders.
An individual hoping to begin working as a Senior Engineering Manager will most likely need to have a Bachelor's degree, or even a Master's, in a subject related to Engineering, as well as several years of experience, at least, in software development, cloud computing, and programming languages such as Javascript.
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a senior engineering manager. For example, did you know that they make an average of $72.39 an hour? That's $150,564 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 3% and produce 5,400 job opportunities across the U.S.
There are certain skills that many senior engineering managers 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, communication skills and detail oriented.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a senior engineering manager, we found that a lot of resumes listed 7.7% of senior engineering managers included cloud, while 7.7% of resumes included architecture, and 7.3% of resumes included project management. 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 engineering manager job title. But what industry to start with? Most senior engineering managers actually find jobs in the technology and manufacturing industries.
If you're interested in becoming a senior engineering manager, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 40.2% of senior engineering managers have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 42.5% of senior engineering managers have master's degrees. Even though most senior engineering managers 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 engineering manager. When we researched the most common majors for a senior engineering manager, we found that they most commonly earn master's degree degrees or bachelor's degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on senior engineering manager resumes include doctoral degree degrees or associate degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a senior engineering manager. In fact, many senior engineering manager jobs require experience in a role such as engineering manager. Meanwhile, many senior engineering managers also have previous career experience in roles such as project engineer or senior engineer.