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Job outlook for transmission engineers in the United States
Are transmission engineer jobs in demand?
Transmission engineer job and salary trends over time
Transmission engineer jobs over time
Transmission engineer job growth rate over time
| Year | # of jobs | % of population |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 1,194 | 0.00% |
| 2020 | 1,189 | 0.00% |
| 2019 | 1,191 | 0.00% |
| 2018 | 1,197 | 0.00% |
| 2017 | 1,177 | 0.00% |
Average transmission engineer salary over time
Transmission engineer salary by year
| Year | Avg. salary | Hourly rate | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | $91,215 | $43.85 | +2.3% |
| 2025 | $89,134 | $42.85 | +2.0% |
| 2024 | $87,425 | $42.03 | +1.7% |
| 2023 | $85,995 | $41.34 | +0.9% |
| 2022 | $85,226 | $40.97 | +1.3% |
Transmission engineer jobs by state
Most common states for transmission engineers
| Rank | State | Population | # of jobs | Employment/ 1000ppl |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | District of Columbia | 693,972 | 217 | 31% |
| 2 | Delaware | 961,939 | 95 | 10% |
| 3 | Virginia | 8,470,020 | 731 | 9% |
| 4 | Massachusetts | 6,859,819 | 535 | 8% |
| 5 | Maryland | 6,052,177 | 477 | 8% |
| 6 | Washington | 7,405,743 | 505 | 7% |
| 7 | Colorado | 5,607,154 | 387 | 7% |
| 8 | Oregon | 4,142,776 | 291 | 7% |
| 9 | Vermont | 623,657 | 41 | 7% |
| 10 | California | 39,536,653 | 2,214 | 6% |
| 11 | Utah | 3,101,833 | 180 | 6% |
| 12 | Alaska | 739,795 | 41 | 6% |
| 13 | Arizona | 7,016,270 | 330 | 5% |
| 14 | Nebraska | 1,920,076 | 94 | 5% |
| 15 | New Hampshire | 1,342,795 | 72 | 5% |
| 16 | Wyoming | 579,315 | 31 | 5% |
| 17 | Michigan | 9,962,311 | 371 | 4% |
| 18 | Minnesota | 5,576,606 | 221 | 4% |
| 19 | Alabama | 4,874,747 | 191 | 4% |
| 20 | Idaho | 1,716,943 | 75 | 4% |
Most common cities for transmission engineers
| Rank | City | # of jobs | Employment/ 1000ppl | Avg. salary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | McLean | 4 | 8% | $87,079 |
| 2 | Novi | 4 | 7% | $82,817 |
| 3 | Wallingford | 3 | 7% | $82,427 |
| 4 | Framingham | 3 | 4% | $91,636 |
| 5 | Portland | 3 | 4% | $83,879 |
| 6 | Lansing | 4 | 3% | $82,214 |
| 7 | Orlando | 6 | 2% | $92,701 |
| 8 | Tampa | 6 | 2% | $92,637 |
| 9 | Glendale | 4 | 2% | $91,888 |
| 10 | Ann Arbor | 3 | 2% | $82,655 |
| 11 | Boston | 5 | 1% | $91,671 |
| 12 | Atlanta | 4 | 1% | $82,755 |
| 13 | Washington | 4 | 1% | $106,165 |
| 14 | Chicago | 9 | 0% | $83,968 |
| 15 | Phoenix | 5 | 0% | $91,887 |
| 16 | Denver | 3 | 0% | $85,957 |
| 17 | Jacksonville | 3 | 0% | $92,489 |
| 18 | San Diego | 3 | 0% | $109,997 |
Transmission Engineer job outlook: Expert opinions
Our panel of transmission engineer experts
Gonzaga University
Stevens Institute of Technology
University of Alabama at Birmingham
San Diego State University
Old Dominion University
University of Central Florida
University of Louisville
What Transmission Engineer skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Steven Schennum Ph.D. P.E.: The most important skill is the ability to learn new things, and especially to unlearn things you “know” after evidence demonstrates that these things are not true. Learn how to analyze information. Your intuition, simulations, and results should all be in alignment. If they are not, then dig deeper. Learn the terminology and jargon specific to your company and your projects. Spend time reading. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don’t be intimidated by new software.
What Transmission Engineer skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Min Song: Communication skills and innovative thinking skills. As emerging technologies continue to be complex and multidisciplinary, it’s important to be able to communicate with professionals in diverse disciplines. Taking robotics, for example, the electrical engineer must be able to work with mechanical and biomechanical engineers, computer engineers, software engineers, artificial intelligence experts, cognitive scientists, system engineers, etc. A person will be able to generate innovative ideas only if the person has a complete and comprehensive understanding of the entire system and can work well with other individuals with a range of expertise.
What Transmission Engineer skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Arie Nakhmani: Electrical Engineering has always (from its inception) been a good profession to enter, but now it is better than ever. Now everything is becoming Electrical Engineering, and the world cannot survive without it even for a few days. Electrical Engineering is the most necessary profession for the survival of modern society.
What Transmission Engineer skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Dr. Arif Engin: Electrical engineering graduates are sought by a wide range of employers in government and industry for many different types of work. The top occupations in electrical engineering fields are projected to grow and sometimes require an advanced degree.
What will help Transmission Engineers increase their earning potential?
Dr. Arif Engin: Electrical engineers solve problems by skillfully applying mathematics and science. Electrical engineering classes are challenging at college, and electrical engineers must embrace lifelong learning to remain at the top of their skills. In the end, seeing the results of their work in a finished product is a rewarding experience.
What type of skills will young Transmission Engineers need?
Michel Audette Ph.D.: One skill that is timeless is the ability to communicate effectively, such as taking a complex design process and distilling it into intuitive slides or reports that lend themselves for senior managers to process in order to come to a decision. An engineer who has that ability will always have some tools in his/her toolbox that makes that individual attractive to a company and to the local technical ecosystem, thus a ripe target for headhunters who willing to champion them to companies looking for top talent. Moreover, speaking and writing well also comes with a vital component of diplomacy, especially in the context of increasingly distributed company workforce: the ability not just to get on with colleagues from different parts of the world, increasingly heterogeneous in terms of gender and possibly sexual preference, but embrace them for who they are. This is often maps to opportunities to travel, as some collaborations lead to meetings face to face, post-covid.
This embrace of heterogeneity is even more relevant in that technical problems being solved are increasingly multi-disciplinary, so that an engineer may need to interact with biologists, physicians, clothing or furniture designers, mathematicians, lawyers, and so on: in my own case, I have to wear a multitude of different hats, while recognizing someone who is a perfect fit for one of those hats when I meet that individual, and making the most of that opportunity to build a truly competent team. Engineers must be able to hold a meaningful, respectful conversation with any of these counterparts, not just discuss code or circuit design. I would advocate that they spend time reading, to maintain their vocabulary and stay abreast of the world around them.
Another one that I advocate is the ability to tap into a revolution that has occurred in parallel with the advent of Internet and cellular technologies, these past 30+ years: the explosion of open-source software tools. I am a committed proponent of open source, as a former contributor to them while previously employed at Kitware (a pioneer in this area, behind VTK, ITK, CMake, and myriad others). I see job ads in Indeed.com that specifically ask for the ability to work with these tools, since they save work and make it possible to produce a prototype in much less time than developing it completely in-house. This ability does not just presuppose the ability to program at a competent level, but other abilities: the ability to track bugs that not be in the calling program, but in the open-source software library itself, the willingness to get answers in the community of developers, the eye for details that extends to graphical processor units that result in accelerations an order of magnitude or better, and so on. These go way beyond writing a self-contained algorithm. Hardware designers may also have similar tools, based on broad standards, Arduino, and the prevalence of 3D printers that make it possible to physically replicate digital models.
Finally, a vital skill is the willingness and ability to keep learning, while embracing revolutions that take place at breathtaking pace. The latest one is the reliance on deep neural networks (DNNs) to synthesize algorithms that can learn and adapt to their data, with much faster performances than feasible with the previous algorithms that DNNs have replaced. The point to make here is not to embrace neural networks in a proximal sense, but that we cannot anticipate what will come next, downstream of DNNs. Graduates of 2021 have to be willing to keep their curiosity and work ethic enough to be responsive to the next wave of technologies, and embrace them for the opportunities that they represent.
Will there be an enduring impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Transmission Engineers?
Michel Audette Ph.D.: My take on this is what I've seen with my wife's work in industry, which suggests that the industrial landscape is going to be increasingly equipped for, and open to, remote work. I think that the implication for graduates is that they may need to be flexible about working within a geographically distributed team. If company deciders feel that someone is worth employing because of a unique skill set, then they would typically be more willing to hire that person even if unable to make it to work regularly, if that is feasible given the nature of the work; some work, such as hardware testing or industrial production, may not lend itself to remote contributions.
Nonetheless, for those areas that accommodate geographically distributed activity, such as software development, graduates can expect to interact with team members all over the US, possibly all over the world, if someone is deemed unique enough to hire despite living abroad. This places a high premium on the ability and willingness to work in a heterogeneous team, where not only will members look different, but also have myriad accents in their English, which will also impose a certain adaptability and tolerance to team members.
A related impact could also be that global hiring will make it easier for multi-national companies to hire a portion of their talent in countries where wages are lower and motivate US-based engineers to seek out graduate degrees in order to increase their competitiveness and employability at US salaries.
Maria Jacob
ProfessorUniversity of Central Florida
Department of ECE
Will there be an enduring impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Transmission Engineers?
Maria Jacob: Well, this is a somewhat difficult question, since it's hard to predict what is going to happen.
Given the current research, everything seems to indicate that even with the vaccine, we won't be able to come back to what we were used to for a long time.
This will mean, work and classes from home for some time. Although I see and enjoy some of the advantages of staying at home (that go from clothing to saving money on gas), I feel we are losing some of the human contact we were used to. Of course, we have software like Zoom or Meet that helps us to communicate with others, but this virtuality is just simply different. For example, some students do just fine, and others can't deal with the fact that they have to write their questions over a chat. More than that, some students have family making everything more difficult.
There are other aspects that also impact the knowledge the new graduates have at the time of start working. For example, we as professors also have to take into account that we are living special circumstances and that some students may find this new system more difficult. Then, sometimes is easy to overcompensate and be more lenient with some things. If we are not careful this could lead to students graduating having less knowledge in some topics, where students pass a class not knowing certain topics that they should.
Cindy Harnett Ph.D.
Assoc Professor, Electrical & Computer EngUniversity of Louisville
J.B. Speed School of Engineering
Will there be an enduring impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Transmission Engineers?
Cindy Harnett Ph.D.: I had an EE student who was an essential worker because he worked part-time at the power company. The power systems field is going to stay in demand. He had multiple jobs to choose from at graduation.
We also do a lot of device simulations and draw up circuit layouts in software. That's great for remote work, something students are likely to be thinking about now.
For students who are more hardware-oriented, prospects for remote work are still pretty good, thanks to miniaturization and low cost of setting up a workbench. My embedded systems students were able to carry on with remote coursework by taking small circuit boards home.
In 2020 when we can't go into the office, EEs can still be productive working from home.
We do seek grad students to work in research labs and we'll pay their tuition, salary, and health insurance.
Going to grad school means doing cutting-edge research and writing papers. It's exciting but it also means looking for a job in a few years.
It's too soon for me to spot a 2020 trend yet, but in recent years they've largely gone with their co-op employers right out of the master's degree program.