How To Become A System Safety Engineer: What It Is and Career Path

What is a system safety engineer and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

A system safety engineer helps to develop, refine, and update safety protocols and software that controls a large system and ensures that even if aspects of the system fail, it does not put the entire system at jeopardy.

Some of the functions that they perform in this capacity include implementing and evaluating all system safety programs, participating in various safety regulations, recommending modifications to existing design, and ensuring compliance to all organization requirements and administering all human safety. To become a system safety engineer, applicants need a bachelor's degree in engineering or a closely related subject, such as computer science or computer engineering, particularly if they are working primarily with software safety systems. Their responsibilities include risk assessment and analysis of how hazardous materials might affect a system, so they need to have experience with these subjects, and they must know how to model them statistically and digitally.

The average hourly salary for the position is $42.37, which amounts to $88,138 annually. The career is expected to grow in the coming years and create new opportunities across the United States.

ScoreSystem Safety EngineerUS Average

Salary

6.4

Avg. Salary $81,790

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability level

7.2

Growth rate 4%

Growth rate 0.3%

Diversity

6.7

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.17%

Asian 11.60%

Black or African American 4.67%

Hispanic or Latino 11.46%

Unknown 3.94%

White 68.16%

Gender

female 19.54%

male 80.46%

Age - 41

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 - 41

Stress level

7.2

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity level

6.6

Complexity level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work life balance

4.4

Work life balance is poor

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a system safety engineer

Explore system safety engineer education requirements

Most common system safety engineer degrees

Bachelor's

73.2 %

Master's

15.2 %

Associate

9.3 %

Start to develop specific system safety engineer skills

Skills	Percentages
Safety Analysis	11.39%
Fault Tree Analysis	6.44%
System Design	6.03%
Aerospace	5.42%
DOD	4.41%

Complete relevant system safety engineer training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 6-12 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New system safety engineers 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 system safety engineer based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real system safety engineer resumes.

Research system safety engineer duties and responsibilities

Manage site s OHSAS 18001 and ISO 14001 3rd party contractors.
Manage the material safety data sheet database and secure all MSDS's within the facility.
Lead accident claims investigation to establish root cause of report safety issues in market and assist with litigation as needed.
Manage drawing database and engineering changes.

Get system safety engineer experience

Generally, it takes 1-2 years to become a system safety engineer. The most common roles before becoming a system safety engineer include safety engineer, reliability engineer team lead and systems engineer.

Prepare your system safety engineer resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your system safety engineer 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 system safety engineer resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose from 10+ customizable system safety engineer resume templates

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