Transportation 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 Transportation Engineer earns the following wages (national and state):
State
The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $74,218
National
The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $77,621
What Does a Professional in this Career Do?
Designs and maintains transportation systems such as roads, ports, airports, and bus or subway 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 | 87 | +8.5% |
| Nationwide | 4665 | +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 Transportation 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.
- 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.
- Writing: Experience expressing business messages effectively in written form. This may include planning drafting and revising as necessary.
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.
- Microstation: MicroStation is a CAD software product for two and three dimensional design and drafting, developed and sold by Bentley Systems.
- Professional Engineer: A Professional Engineer (PE) is an engineer certified by a state board of registration to practice engineering.
- AutoCAD: AutoCAD is a commercial computer-aided design (CAD) and drafting software application.
- 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.
Distinguishing Skills
Any Transportation Engineer that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:
- Drainage Design: Road drainage design has as its basic objective the reduction and/or elimination of energy generated by flowing water.
- CADD: Computer-aided design (CAD) is the use of computer systems (or workstations) to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design.
- Highway Construction: Road construction requires the creation of an engineered continuous right-of-way or roadbed, overcoming geographic obstacles and having grades low enough to permit vehicle or foot travel, and may be required to meet standards set by law or official guidelines.
- Traffic Management: Traffic management is a key branch within logistics. It concerns the planning, control and purchasing of transport services needed to physically move vehicles (for example aircraft, road vehicles, rolling stock and watercraft) and freight.
- Construction Inspection: A construction inspection is a review and examination of a commercial structure, residence, or municipal project.
Salary Boosting Skills
A professional who wishes to excel in this career path may consider developing the following highly valued skills:
- Land Development: Working experience of Land Development, which refers to investments making land more usable by humans. For accounting purposes it refers to any variety of projects that increase the value of the property . Most are depreciable, but some land improvements are not able to be depreciated because a useful life cannot be determined. Home building and containment are two of the most common and the oldest types of development.
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 | 46% |
| 6 to 8 years | 17% |
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:
- Transportation Engineer
- Senior Transportation Engineer
- Senior Supply Chain Engineer - Transportation
- Highway Engineer
- Senior Highway Engineer
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