How To Become A Senior Technical Designer: What It Is and Career Path

What is a senior technical designer and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Quoted expert

Mohammed Daqaq

There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a senior technical designer. For example, did you know that they make an average of $40.51 an hour? That's $84,266 a year! Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 2% and produce 6,400 job opportunities across the U.S.

What general advice would you give to a senior technical designer?

Mohammed Daqaq

Global Network Professor and Associate Dean, Website

This is a difficult question to answer and is very much dependent on how satisfied an individual is about their job. I can comment on what I hear from students with regards to their ME education. Most engineers choose ME because of its breadth and that it allows them more freedom to maneuver the job market once they graduate. They can clearly see that, despite being one of the most traditional engineering disciplines, it is still very trendy with employers. They also like the hands-on nature of the discipline where they get to design, optimize, and build physical components that work and move together to achieve a desired task. As for the dislikes, some students complain about the fact that ME requires an in-depth understanding of many mathematical concepts which many students find to be challenging.

ScoreSenior Technical DesignerUS Average

Salary

6.6

Avg. Salary $84,266

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

7.4

Growth rate 2%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

6.4

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.11%

Asian 11.91%

Black or African American 3.34%

Hispanic or Latino 9.02%

Unknown 4.58%

White 71.05%

Gender

female 42.46%

male 57.54%

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

7.4

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

8.6

Complexity level is advanced

7 - challenging

Work life balance

5.1

Work life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a senior technical designer

Explore senior technical designer education requirements

Most common senior technical designer degrees

Bachelor's

49.8 %

Associate

36.2 %

Master's

5.1 %

Start to develop specific senior technical designer skills

Skills	Percentages
Sketch	10.40%
PLM	6.11%
CAD	5.14%
Garment Construction	5.03%
Prototyping	4.99%

Complete relevant senior technical designer training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 1-2 years on post-employment, on-the-job training. New senior technical designers 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 technical designer based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real senior technical designer resumes.

Research senior technical designer duties and responsibilities

Manage and train QC team.
Manage newborn, infant & toddler technical specialists.
Lead design team in implementing Solidworks from concept phase to documentation phase.
Manage local sewing vendors to cut and sew women's dress patterns and outerwear style development for expand business.

Get senior technical designer experience

Generally, it takes 4-6 years to become a senior technical designer. The most common roles before becoming a senior technical designer include design technician, designer team lead and senior designer.

Prepare your senior technical designer resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your senior technical designer resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a senior technical designer resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

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