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Technical assistant vs junior engineer

The differences between technical assistants and junior engineers can be seen in a few details. Each job has different responsibilities and duties. While it typically takes 1-2 years to become a technical assistant, becoming a junior engineer takes usually requires 4-6 years. Additionally, a junior engineer has an average salary of $70,653, which is higher than the $34,159 average annual salary of a technical assistant.

The top three skills for a technical assistant include patients, customer service and patient care. The most important skills for a junior engineer are control systems, java, and C++.

Technical assistant vs junior engineer overview

Technical AssistantJunior Engineer
Yearly salary$34,159$70,653
Hourly rate$16.42$33.97
Growth rate10%2%
Number of jobs73,750107,703
Job satisfaction--
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 53%Bachelor's Degree, 70%
Average age4241
Years of experience26

What does a technical assistant do?

A technical assistant is responsible for supporting business operations by doing administrative and technical tasks under a direct supervisor or tenured staff. Duties of a technical assistant include creating meeting reports, scheduling events, responding to clients' inquiries through email and phone calls, monitoring office inventories, basic troubleshooting on defective equipment, providing recommendations on product development, and analyzing operations processes. Technical assistants require strong time-management and multi-tasking skills to perform tasks in a fast-paced environment and high-level operations.

What does a junior engineer do?

A Junior Engineer helps design, build, or maintain engines, machines, or public works. They work under the supervision of an engineer.

Technical assistant vs junior engineer salary

Technical assistants and junior engineers have different pay scales, as shown below.

Technical AssistantJunior Engineer
Average salary$34,159$70,653
Salary rangeBetween $22,000 And $51,000Between $54,000 And $91,000
Highest paying CityBoston, MASan Francisco, CA
Highest paying stateMassachusettsWashington
Best paying companyThe American Musical and Dramatic AcademyApple
Best paying industryInsuranceTechnology

Differences between technical assistant and junior engineer education

There are a few differences between a technical assistant and a junior engineer in terms of educational background:

Technical AssistantJunior Engineer
Most common degreeBachelor's Degree, 53%Bachelor's Degree, 70%
Most common majorBusinessCivil Engineering
Most common collegeStanford UniversityMassachusetts Institute of Technology

Technical assistant vs junior engineer demographics

Here are the differences between technical assistants' and junior engineers' demographics:

Technical AssistantJunior Engineer
Average age4241
Gender ratioMale, 54.8% Female, 45.2%Male, 83.4% Female, 16.6%
Race ratioBlack or African American, 11.1% Unknown, 5.4% Hispanic or Latino, 15.8% Asian, 11.9% White, 55.4% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.4%Black or African American, 3.1% Unknown, 4.5% Hispanic or Latino, 7.8% Asian, 16.7% White, 67.8% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.1%
LGBT Percentage11%5%

Differences between technical assistant and junior engineer duties and responsibilities

Technical assistant example responsibilities.

  • Create and manage original MARC records from OCLC database including verification, editing and updating of data and shelf list.
  • Manage customer complaints and internal GMP audits for product manufacturing, coordinate FDA audits and recommend corrective actions.
  • Input service reports into AS400 using 10 key.
  • Assist with ambulation, transfer from bed to chair and CPR certify.
  • Work involve development in PHP with back end as MYSQL server database.
  • Operate heat sealers, centrifuges, sterile docking equipment, and irradiation unit.
  • Show more

Junior engineer example responsibilities.

  • Manage the collection of static HTML sites for marketing.
  • Manage Terraform and refactore from monolithic to application specific components.
  • Work on HTML, CSS & Java.
  • Used CSS, HTML/XHTML, and JavaScript to customize the front-end of a large web application.
  • Design the user interactive (UI) web pages using web technologies like HTML5, XHTML, and CSS3.
  • Work on the windows default firewall application.
  • Show more

Technical assistant vs junior engineer skills

Common technical assistant skills
  • Patients, 23%
  • Customer Service, 12%
  • Patient Care, 11%
  • Technical Assistance, 6%
  • Lab Equipment, 5%
  • Phlebotomy, 4%
Common junior engineer skills
  • Control Systems, 11%
  • Java, 8%
  • C++, 5%
  • C #, 5%
  • Windows, 5%
  • Troubleshoot, 5%

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