Design the chips, boards and machines that software runs on.
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Pay, the path, pros and cons and the facts on one printable page. Good for a wall or a guidance counsellor.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Typical
$161,740
New graduate
$92,940
Senior or principal engineer
$225,330
The national median is $161,740 a year and the bottom tenth start near $92,940. These figures are published for Computer Hardware Engineers, the closest survey title to this job. People who call themselves computer engineers but write software are counted under software developer instead, and that occupation pays somewhat less at the median.
$90,000 to $115,000
First job out of a four year engineering degree
Where you work moves this a long way. California, Texas, Oregon and Massachusetts hold most of the chip and device employers and pay well above the national figure. Defense contractors pay less but hire steadily and offer security clearance, which raises your value later.
$225,330 and up
Top tenth: principal engineers, chip architects, technical leads
At large technology companies a big part of senior pay is company stock, which is not counted the same way in a wage survey. Total compensation at the top can run well beyond the published number, and it can also fall when the share price does.
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is two years at a community college at about $4,000 a year, then transferring into a four year engineering program at an in state public university, which is a real and common route. The high end is four years out of state or at a private university at around $50,000 a year before any aid. Paid internships and co op terms are normal in engineering and often pay $25 to $45 an hour, which takes a genuine bite out of the debt, and the sticker price at expensive schools is rarely what a student with need actually pays after aid.
Paid internships and co-op programs are normal in engineering and often pay $25 to $45 an hour, which takes a real bite out of the debt.
Company stock
Restricted shares that vest over several years are standard at large technology employers.
Health insurance and a retirement match
Full benefits are the norm, not the exception, in this field.
Paid tuition for a master's degree
Many employers will pay for a graduate degree while you keep working.
Relocation and signing bonuses
Chip companies compete hard for new graduates and pay to move you.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
A four year engineering degree is the door. There is no way around it in hardware.
High school with heavy math and physics
Grade 12
Calculus and physics are the entry requirements for almost every engineering school.
Bachelor of science in computer engineering
4 years
Pick a program accredited by ABET (the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology), which is what employers and licensing boards recognize.
Internships or a co-op
Summers, or a full year
One or two paid summers inside a real company. This is what turns a degree into a job offer.
First engineering job
1 to 2 years
Junior design, verification or test engineer. You learn the company's tools for a year before you are trusted with your own block of the design.
Master's degree, if you want chip design
1 to 2 more years
Optional for most roles, close to expected for advanced semiconductor and processor design work.
Calculus
Non negotiable. Engineering programs start where high school calculus ends.
Physics
Electricity and magnetism are the foundation of everything you will design.
Computer science
You will write code every week, even on the hardware side.
Electronics or robotics club
Building things badly and fixing them is the best preparation there is.
Nobody has to be licensed to design a circuit board, so most computer engineers never get a professional license at all. The route exists if you want it. You take the FE (Fundamentals of Engineering) exam near the end of your degree, a 110 question test that costs about $225, then work about four years under a licensed engineer and sit the PE (Principles and Practice of Engineering) exam, which is around $425 in most states plus your state board's own fee. Licensing is done state by state. It matters most if you end up signing off on work for the public, in power systems, buildings or safety critical control.
Accredited computer engineering programs exist in every state. A few well known ones.
Purdue University, Indiana
Offers a separate bachelor of science in computer engineering alongside electrical engineering.
Georgia Institute of Technology
One of the largest electrical and computer engineering schools in the country.
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Deep semiconductor and computer architecture research.
Your own state's flagship university
In-state tuition at an accredited program gets you the same first job for a fraction of the money.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Digital design and verification
Writing hardware description code and proving a chip works before it is built. Always short of people.
Embedded systems and firmware
The code that runs on the chip itself. The widest job market in hardware.
Semiconductor process and packaging
How chips are actually manufactured. New American fabrication plants are hiring for this.
Security clearance
Defense work requires it, takes months to obtain, and makes you hard to replace.
Machine learning hardware
Designing accelerators for AI workloads is the hottest corner of the field right now.
Personal projects you can show
A microcontroller board you designed and had made says more than a transcript.
Soldering and lab instruments
Being useful in a lab on day one gets you the interesting work early.
Programming in C and Python
Hardware engineers write test scripts and low level code constantly.
Student engineering competitions
Robotics, solar car and rocketry teams are direct recruiting grounds.
People use the words computer engineer for two fairly different careers. One designs physical things: processors, boards, sensors and the firmware that drives them. The other writes software and just happens to have an engineering degree. The hardware side is smaller, pays a slightly higher median, needs the degree and cannot be learned from a short course. The software side has far more openings and more ways in. A computer engineering degree qualifies you for both, which is a real part of its value.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Most of the day is at a screen, in design and simulation tools, not at a workbench. You read specifications, write or review the description of a block of logic, then run simulations overnight and spend the morning working out why one of them failed. There is a stand up meeting with your team and often a long one with the software group about who is going to fix a problem that sits between them. When silicon or boards come back from the factory, you move into the lab with instruments and hunt for the difference between what you designed and what you got.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Once a processor design is sent to the factory, correcting an error means a new set of masks and another run of wafers. That is why verification engineers, the people who try to break a design before it is built, are paid as well as the people who design it.
Federal funding has pushed a wave of new semiconductor plants in Arizona, Texas, Ohio and New York. They need engineers and technicians in places that had almost none of this work ten years ago.
ABET (the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology) accredits nearly 5,000 programs at about 950 institutions worldwide. An unaccredited engineering degree can block you from sitting licensing exams later, so check before you enroll.
Engineers call it debug, and it is the bulk of the calendar on any real project. The people who enjoy that part are the ones who last in this field.
Last checked September 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in United States dollars, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and published pay scales. They vary by state, employer and experience. Tuition is for in-state students at public schools unless the card says otherwise.