2023 proved to be a particularly strong year for CEEcareers job posts, with 12,530 jobs covering the entire range of Civil and Environmental Engineering (CEE), breaking 2020's job posting record of 10,171. The vast majority of postings, specifically 11,509, were for full-time positions. Internships were 861, part-time jobs 114 and contract jobs 46.
The field with the most posted job postings was geotechnical engineering with 1,268 postings, followed by structural engineering with 1,097, transportation engineering with 1,043, and environmental engineering with 819. In general there is a significant presence of jobs related to the construction industry, the environment, the design and management. The following table shows the top 10 sectors according to the number of posted jobs for each. There was quite a variety of job titles, with the most common being those of Structural Engineer, Project Manager, Project Engineer, Civil Engineer and Geotechnical Engineer. On the right table we can also see the list of the 10 most popular job titles posted.
1,421 out of 12,530 jobs called for some kind of
Civil Engineer. The following are the most popular titles related to Civil
Engineers specifically. Generally there is a
very long tail of titles (something
that also applies to the following lists), with many
of them appearing only a few times.
1,268 jobs belong in the Geotechnical Engineering category, while 1,097 jobs belong in the Structural Engineering category. The following are the most popular titles related to these categories.
How long do job positions stay posted?
The average time that CEE jobs were posted was 102 days. Environmental Engineering and Geotechnical Engineering job positions appear to be slightly harder to fill, with jobs being posted for an average of 116 and 115 days, respectively. Structural Engineering job positions are being posted for an average of 104 days, with Transportation Engineering jobs having the shortest average time posted (97 days).
Jobs and seniority
Based on 2023 data, the average required experience across the spectrum of CEE jobs was 5.8 years. Of the "major" engineering categories, Transportation Engineer jobs require the most years of experience on average with 7.65 years, while Environmental Engineer jobs require the fewest (6.12 years). The average required experience for Geotechnical Engineer jobs was 6.2 years, while for Structural Engineer jobs is 7.0 years. There are many jobs that do not fall into any of the above 4 categories (technicians, designers, student internships) and have lower seniority requirements, hence the average of 5.8 years across the pool of available jobs (which is lower than each of the 4 aforementioned main CEE specialties).
In the following table the number of available jobs has been grouped into groups of years of experience required. The category with the most jobs in the CEE field overall is the range requiring 4 to 7 years of experience, i.e. mid-level job positions.
1,905 posts out of 12,530 were for senior roles, 371 were for junior roles and 861 were for internships. A breakdown of the most popular senior job titles is shown in the following table.
What kind of formal qualifications are required?
In terms of the formal qualifications the job postings required, the majority of them required a bachelor's degree, but no more than that, as can be seen in the next chart. There were also quite a few positions that did not require a degree at all, mostly involving technicians as well as student internships.
What salary should I expect?
Over the years there have been several job postings that also included information on the annual salary (upper limit) that the company was willing to pay for that position. Based on this data, we see that the best paying positions require a master's degree. Perhaps surprisingly, jobs that require a PhD seem to command lower salaries. However, no absolute conclusions should be drawn from this, as salary information was available for relatively few PhD-required jobs, which may have involved entry-level academic or research positions.
Another reason could be that for many of the senior jobs the required academic level may still be a bachelor's or master's, while a PhD is specifically required for post-graduation jobs with lower experience requirements, where salaries are consequently lower. That is, some of the positions that require a bachelor's or master's degree will be occupied by graduates with a doctorate, and possibly with better earnings than graduates of lower educational levels.
It is worth noting that the data refer to the salary ceiling of (some) job postings, and not the actual average salaries that graduates actually earn by education level or the salary that the company will ultimately pay the selected candidate, so our dear PhD holders shouldn't be put off by this!
Specifically for 2023, the average "upper bound" annual salary of all CEE jobs that contained this information was $97,803. For the jobs belonging in the Geotechnical Engineering category it was $97,727, for those of the Environmental Engineering category it was $92,500, for those of the Structural Engineering category it was $89,166, and for those of the Transportation Engineering category $88,750 (not big differences, we could say).
The evolution of the offered salaries over the years shows fluctuations, also a result of the fact that the posted jobs that provided this information were not enough until recently (especially for 2017 the relevant information was completely absent). However, an upward trend of around $3,500 per year over the last decade is evident.
The requested seniority predictably plays a significant role in the salary offered. The following chart gives a picture of the salary offered against the years of experience required, for 2023 job posts that had both of these pieces of information.
Regarding the salary offered by field, it seems that Coastal Engineering is the winner here.
Geographical distribution of jobs
Although jobs are posted from many regions of the world, the vast majority (9,699 out of 12,530) were in the US, with the (distant) second country in the number of posts being Canada with 361. The top 4 countries for jobs are all English-speaking (with Canada partly French-speaking of course).
By looking at the posted jobs specifically in the US, we can have a breakdown by state. The US states with the most CEE jobs according to our 2023 statistics data are shown below. You can read a more detailed analysis here, as well as browse the website for analyses of individual civil engineering specialties (geotechnical, environmental, structural, and transportation).
