Staff engineers come in all shapes and sizes and work in a variety of industries. They design and build things: systems, services, products, roads, machines, or equipment. They test and repair, according to their field: electrical equipment, heavy machinery, IT systems and devices, and so on.
They are senior members of an organization. Depending on the size and structure of the organization they work for, they might be in charge of their department or operations in their area of expertise. Alternatively, they might work just below the principal engineer.
Generally, you gain promotion into this role from a junior engineer or engineer position, so hang in there if this is your goal.
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a staff engineer. For example, did you know that they make an average of $43.4 an hour? That's $90,270 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 4% and produce 12,800 job opportunities across the U.S.
There are certain skills that many staff 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 creativity, listening skills and math skills.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a staff engineer, we found that a lot of resumes listed 10.1% of staff engineers included python, while 6.8% of resumes included architecture, and 6.3% of resumes included java. 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 staff engineer job title. But what industry to start with? Most staff engineers actually find jobs in the technology and manufacturing industries.
If you're interested in becoming a staff engineer, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 50.9% of staff engineers have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 33.5% of staff engineers have master's degrees. Even though most staff engineers have a college degree, it's impossible 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 staff engineer. When we researched the most common majors for a staff engineer, we found that they most commonly earn bachelor's degree degrees or master's degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on staff engineer resumes include doctoral degree degrees or associate degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a staff engineer. In fact, many staff engineer jobs require experience in a role such as senior engineer. Meanwhile, many staff engineers also have previous career experience in roles such as engineer or project engineer.