This job involves designing structures like bridges, dams, parks, ships, buildings, tunnels, telecommunications structures, marine construction, wastewater treatment facilities, and other similar buildings. People working as senior structural designers often have to design, review documents, and analyze structural designs. Also, as a person working in this capacity, you will manage, review and coordinate projects while developing and supervising the construction of new buildings. You will work together with engineers and architects to create sketches and designs and create budget estimates for the designed structures.
You can apply for this job if all you have is a high school degree or college degree. However, a good senior structural designer must have problem-solving skills and writing skills for documentation. Senior structure designers are knowledgeable and vast in math skills and in the analysis of various structure plans. Your pay will be about $65 an hour, which makes about $134,424 per year.
What is a Senior Structural Designer?
What Does a Senior Structural Designer Do
There are certain skills that many senior structural designers 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, business skills and writing skills.
How To Become a Senior Structural Designer
If you're interested in becoming a senior structural designer, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 36.1% of senior structural designers have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 2.3% of senior structural designers have master's degrees. Even though some senior structural designers have a college degree, it's possible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Senior Structural Designer Career Paths
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 lead designer you might progress to a role such as project manager eventually. Later on in your career, you could end up with the title construction manager.
Average Salary for a Senior Structural Designer
What Am I Worth?
Top Colleges for Senior Structural Designers
1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA • Private
2. Stanford University
Stanford, CA • Private
3. Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA • Private
4. Cornell University
Ithaca, NY • Private
5. University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
Ann Arbor, MI • Private
6. Rice University
Houston, TX • Private
7. University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN • Private
8. University of California - Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA • Private
9. University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA • Private
10. Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD • Private
Top Skills For a Senior Structural Designer
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, 17.3% of senior structural designers listed autocad on their resume, but soft skills such as analytical skills and business skills are important as well.
Choose From 10+ Customizable Senior Structural Designer Resume templates
Zippia allows you to choose from different easy-to-use Senior Structural Designer templates, and provides you with expert advice. Using the templates, you can rest assured that the structure and format of your Senior Structural Designer resume is top notch. Choose a template with the colors, fonts & text sizes that are appropriate for your industry.
Senior Structural Designer Demographics
Senior Structural Designer Gender Distribution
After extensive research and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
- Among senior structural designers, 7.7% of them are women, while 92.3% are men.
- The most common race/ethnicity among senior structural designers is White, which makes up 72.8% of all senior structural designers.
- The most common foreign language among senior structural designers is Spanish at 63.6%.
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Best States For a Senior Structural Designer
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a senior structural designer. The best states for people in this position are Washington, Texas, Arizona, and Nevada. Senior structural designers make the most in Washington with an average salary of $116,849. Whereas in Texas and Arizona, they would average $115,972 and $113,166, respectively. While senior structural designers would only make an average of $109,819 in Nevada, 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
$116,849
Avg. Salary
2. Texas
$115,972
Avg. Salary
3. Arizona
$113,166
Avg. Salary
How Do Senior Structural Designer Rate Their Jobs?
Top Senior Structural Designer Employers
Most Common Employers For Senior Structural Designer
| Rank | Company | Average Salary | Hourly Rate | Job Openings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Edwards Lifesciences | $106,434 | $51.17 | 6 |
| 2 | General Motors | $101,866 | $48.97 | 6 |
| 3 | The Dow Chemical Company | $100,176 | $48.16 | 9 |
| 4 | Fluor Corporation | $97,291 | $46.77 | 43 |
| 5 | Westinghouse Appliances Australia | $96,364 | $46.33 | 7 |
| 6 | Boeing | $96,351 | $46.32 | 9 |
| 7 | Northrop Grumman | $95,466 | $45.90 | 9 |
| 8 | Jacobs Enterprises | $93,600 | $45.00 | 7 |
| 9 | McDermott International | $93,254 | $44.83 | 9 |
| 10 | Alstom | $93,146 | $44.78 | 7 |