Civil Engineer
Career Area: Engineering
Occupation Group: Civil and Safety Engineering
Salary
Percentile wages tell how much a certain percentage of an overall population in a geographic area or within a given industry or field makes. The percentile wage estimate is the value of a wage below which a certain percent of workers fall.
An example would be the 25th percentile, 25 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 75 percent earn more than the estimated wage value. At the 75th percentile, 75 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 25 percent earn more than the estimated wage value.
A typical Civil Engineer earns the following wages (national and state):
State
The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $75,045
National
The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $78,355
What Does a Professional in this Career Do?
Designs and supervises large construction projects such as public buildings, roads, and waterways. Designs projects that meet the needs of users and the public and are structurally sound. Addresses environmental and land use issues in project design. May specialize in a particular aspect of design and construction, or a particular type of construction, such as transportation systems.
Employment Trends
The job demand and job growth statistics shown here were derived from job posts over the past year. Expected job growth projections are extrapolated from year-over-year job post listing history.
Job demand and job growth is expected at the following rates:
| Location | Growth | |
|---|---|---|
| North Carolina | 2948 | +8.5% |
| Nationwide | 85977 | +6.3% |
Skills
A professional in this position typically utilizes the following skills in the course of everyday work in this exciting and challenging field:
Baseline Skills
The following are baseline skills every Civil Engineer is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:
- Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
- Planning: Working experience with the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve desired goals.
- Microsoft Office: Microsoft Office is an office suite of applications, servers, and services developed by Microsoft.
- Teamwork / Collaboration: Experience working in collaborative efforts with a team to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way.
- Microsoft Excel: Microsoft Excel is a spreadsheet developed by Microsoft for Windows, macOS, Android and iOS. It features calculation, graphing tools, pivot tables, and a macro programming language called Visual Basic for Applications.
Specialized Skills
These skills are specific to working in this career:
- Civil Engineering: Civil engineering is a professional engineering discipline that deals with the design, construction, and maintenance of the physical and naturally built environment, including works like roads, bridges, canals, dams, and buildings.
- Project Management: Project management is the discipline of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria.
- AutoCAD: AutoCAD is a commercial computer-aided design (CAD) and drafting software application.
- Budgeting: Experience planning how the financial resources of a business or department are to be allocated during the next business period.
- Scheduling: Working experience making schedules, which are basic time-management tools, consisting of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place withing an organization.
Distinguishing Skills
Any Civil Engineer that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:
- Structural Design: Structural design is the methodical investigation of the stability, strength and rigidity of structures. The basic objective in structural analysis and design is to produce a structure capable of resisting all applied loads without failure during its intended life.
- Structural Failure Analysis: Structural integrity and failure is an aspect of engineering which deals with the ability of a structure to support a designed load (weight, force, etc...) without breaking, and includes the study of past structural failures in order to prevent failures in future designs.
- Storm Water Management: The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) is a dynamic rainfallrunoffsubsurface runoff simulation model used for single-event to long-term (continuous) simulation of the surface/subsurface hydrology quantity and quality from primarily urban/suburban areas.
- Geotechnical Engineering: Geotechnical engineering is the branch of civil engineering concerned with the engineering behavior of earth materials.
- Engineering Calculations:
Experience
This position typically requires the following level of experience. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.
| Experience Required | % |
| 0 to 2 years | 25% |
| 3 to 5 years | 44% |
| 6 to 8 years | 15% |
Many of the programs offered through NC State are designed for working professionals who need additional credentials to enhance existing work experience.
Students who do not have the expected level of experience may wish to look into internship and employment opportunities.
Common Job Titles
It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:
- Project Engineer
- Civil Engineer
- Structural Engineer
- Geotechnical Engineer
- Senior Civil Engineer
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