Electronics Engineer Career: Roles, Salaries & Entry-Level Jobs

Electronics Engineering Occupation Overview

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, the field of electronics engineering is projected to grow only about 4 percent over the next decade. This rate is below average compared to all careers and to engineering professions as a group. Other engineering disciplines, such as environmental engineering, are expected to experience significantly stronger growth.

Despite growing demand for products such as communications equipment, defense-related technology, medical electronics, and consumer electronics, the field faces pressure from international firms that are increasingly developing electronic products and engineering services. This competitive pressure is felt most acutely by companies that specialize in engineering and design services.

Electronics engineers — excluding computer hardware engineers, who are classified separately — handle a wide range of responsibilities, from designing CD players to developing global positioning systems that track a vehicle's continuous location. These engineers design, develop, test, and oversee the manufacture of electronic equipment, including broadcast and communications systems. As with other engineering disciplines, electronics engineers often specialize in areas such as control systems, aviation, or communications. A Master's degree is typically required for most advanced design, development, and research roles, and generally takes one to two additional years of full-time study beyond the undergraduate degree.

The primary professional organization for electronics engineers is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the largest transnational engineering professional society, with more than 300,000 members in over 130 countries. The IEEE places a strong emphasis on education, occupational development, and engineering activities.

Upon graduating from college, electronics engineers are typically supervised by more experienced colleagues. In larger companies, they receive formal training or participate in entry-level programs designed for their field. After gaining a few years of experience, they are generally assigned increasingly complex projects and given greater independence in design, development, and problem-solving.

Career Progression and Earnings

Engineers may choose to remain as individual contributors or advance to become technical specialists, team leaders, or managers overseeing other engineers and technicians. Over time, some move into senior management or transition into related areas such as marketing, sales, or operational support. Those with advanced degrees may pursue careers in research and development.

Earnings in electronics engineering vary considerably based on specialty, type of work, and employer size. The Occupational Handbook reports that median incomes range from approximately $52,000 for the lowest 10 percent of earners to over $115,000 for the highest 10 percent. In the federal government, mean annual salaries for engineers in 2007 ranged from $75,144 in agricultural engineering to $107,546 in ceramic engineering. According to a 2007 National Association of Colleges and Employers survey, engineers as a group earn some of the highest average starting salaries among bachelor's degree graduates.

Large corporations such as General Electric have developed structured entry-level programs specifically for electrical and electronics engineers. At GE, this is known as the Edison Engineering Program — a two-year initiative that includes three or four rotational assignments across different GE businesses or units. Many Edison Engineering participants work with GE Global Research during these rotations.

For example, one electronics engineering graduate entered the Edison Program at GE Ordnance Systems in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. He completed rotating assignments within the division, received a fully paid Master's degree, and was given time during the workweek to attend classes. His first assignment involved supporting GE field electronics operations at Trident submarine bases. His second was with a Navy power electronics, machinery, and controls group. His third placed him on a team designing and analyzing advanced systems using filtering and optimal control methods for inertial guidance and nonlinear systems.

GE Edison Engineering Program: An Entry-Level Case Study

After completing the Edison Program, he joined BBN Technologies in Cambridge, Massachusetts — a contract research and development company whose primary customer is the federal government, particularly the Department of Defense. BBN is perhaps best known as the company that built the routers for and managed DARPA-Net, the precursor to the modern ARPANET and Internet. His work at BBN has ranged from brief single-person consulting engagements to large, multi-year programs developing and fielding prototype systems.

Working in R&D, he notes, has provided broad technical exposure rather than narrow specialization. He has developed expertise across control theory, structural acoustics, signal processing, array design, real-time and non-real-time software development, and underwater and in-air sound propagation. This breadth of experience has taken him to sonar sea trials in California, Florida, and Scotland; acoustic trials aboard submarines; field work with the Marines in desert environments; and underwater sound surveys out of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.

While this individual leveraged an entry-level program to launch his career, many electronics engineers join companies directly without participating in a formal rotation program. A selection of representative entry-level positions for recent graduates is described below.

According to GE's corporate website, the company is organized into six major business units: GE Commercial Finance, GE Healthcare, GE Industrial, GE Infrastructure, GE Money, and NBC Universal. In addition, GE operates four global research centers employing more than 2,500 researchers. In 2006, GE generated $163 billion in revenues and $20.7 billion in earnings. Over the preceding five years, GE grew its earnings an average of 10 percent annually. The company also generated $24.7 billion in cash in 2006, enabling continued business investment, a return of over $18 billion to shareholders, and the acquisition of new growth businesses. GE's customer base ranges from home consumers purchasing GE appliances to airlines purchasing GE jet engines, and its competitors span a similarly broad range — from Kenmore appliances to Pratt & Whitney engines.

GE Global Research, where many electronics engineers are employed, is one of the world's largest and most diversified industrial research organizations. It supplies technology solutions across the entire GE enterprise. Research is focused on breakthrough innovations in areas such as molecular imaging and diagnostics, energy conversion, nanotechnology, advanced propulsion, and security technologies. GE Global Research is headquartered in Niskayuna, New York, and maintains facilities in Bangalore, India; Shanghai, China; and Munich, Germany.

The following job listings illustrate the range of entry-level opportunities available to electronics engineering graduates. Titles, responsibilities, and educational requirements vary considerably across employers and industries.