Electrical Engineer

What electrical engineers make

The national median is $120,630 a year, the bottom tenth earn $76,550 or less and the top tenth $184,300 or more, in the 2025 federal wage survey.

Starting pay

A new graduate at a manufacturer, utility or defense contractor usually starts in this lower part of the range. Semiconductor and defense employers cluster in a few places: Texas, Arizona, California, Colorado and the Boston area. Utilities often come with a pension.

The top quarter

At semiconductor and big technology companies a chunk of that arrives as stock rather than salary, so the number on your offer letter and the number in your bank account will not match.

What it costs to get there

File the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) every year. Borrowing for this degree is easier to repay than it sounds: nine in ten electrical engineers earn more than $76,550 a year (2025), and the degree is four years, not six.

Benefits

• Paid internships and co-op terms

  Engineering interns are usually paid, and most firms hire their interns.

• Employer-paid exams and tuition

  Many employers cover the licensing exams and a master's degree while you work.

• Federal and utility pensions

  Public power utilities and federal agencies are among the last employers with real defined-benefit plans, which pay a set amount every month for life.

• Public Service Loan Forgiveness

  Federal, state and city engineering jobs count toward this program, which cancels remaining student loans after 10 years of qualifying payments.

The path to becoming an electrical engineer, step by step

Four years of hard math, then a job. The license is optional in this branch, and most engineers skip it.

1. 1

   High school diploma

   Grade 12

   Calculus and physics are the two that decide whether first year feels possible. Take both as far as your school goes.

2. 2

   Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering

   4 years

   Choose a program accredited by ABET (the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology). Circuits, signals, electromagnetics and a lot of differential equations.

3. 3

   Internships or a co-op

   During college

   One paid term every summer, or a full co-op year. This is how nearly everyone gets their first offer.

4. 4

   First engineering job

   Straight after graduating

   Design, test, applications or field engineering. You work under experienced engineers and learn what the textbook left out.

5. 5

   License, if your work needs it

   4 more years, optional

   Pass the Fundamentals of Engineering exam, work about 4 years under a licensed engineer, then pass the Principles and Practice of Engineering exam. Needed mainly for power and building systems work.

High school courses that help you become an electrical engineer

• Calculus

  The degree starts at calculus and never slows down.

• Physics

  Electricity and magnetism is the core of the whole field.

• Computer science

  Nearly every electrical job now involves writing code for hardware.

• Shop or robotics club

  Being able to solder and actually build the thing sets you apart in interviews.

Time and money, at a glance

The license is optional here, and that surprises people

Every state licenses Professional Engineers through its own board, and you need that license to sign off on designs the public relies on, such as building power systems. But most electrical engineers work in manufacturing and product design, where a long-standing industry exemption means the company takes responsibility instead of an individual. So plenty of excellent electrical engineers never get licensed. If you plan to work on buildings, utilities or anything a city inspector signs, get it anyway.

Where people study

What matters is accreditation, not prestige. Check the program is on the accredited list before you apply.

• Your state's flagship engineering school

  In-state tuition, a local employer network, and the same accredited degree.

• Big public engineering campuses

  Georgia Institute of Technology, Purdue University, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Texas at Austin all run large electrical programs.

• Community college first

  Finish calculus and physics cheaply, then transfer into an engineering program. Many states have transfer agreements that guarantee it.

• Co-op schools

  Some universities build paid work terms into the degree, so you graduate with a year of real experience.

Branches that change the work

• Power systems

  Grids, substations, renewables. The branch where the license really matters, and where utilities are short of people.

• Chip and circuit design

  Semiconductors and analog design. The most math, and often wants a master's degree.

• Embedded and control systems

  Writing the software that runs on hardware. Half electrical, half programming.

• Communications and radio frequency

  Antennas, radar, satellites. Heavy in defense work, which usually requires citizenship and a security clearance.

Nice-to-haves

• A summer internship every year

  The single most reliable route to a good first job.

• Python and C

  You will use both, whatever branch you end up in.

• Personal projects you can show

  A circuit board you designed and had made says more than a transcript.

• A master's degree

  Common in chip design and signal processing, unnecessary almost everywhere else, and often paid for by an employer.

Defense and clearances

A big share of electrical engineering work in the United States is defense related: radar, avionics, communications and weapons systems. Those jobs usually require citizenship and a security clearance, which the employer sponsors and which takes months of background checking. The job security is unusually good, and the trade-off is that you often cannot tell anyone what you did today.

What an electrical engineer does day to day

Mostly a desk: schematics, simulations, calculations and design reviews where colleagues pick your work apart on purpose. Then time in a lab with a test bench, a power supply and an oscilloscope, finding out why the board does something the simulation did not. Plus meetings with mechanical engineers, software people and suppliers, because a product is never only electrical.

The honest pros and cons of being an electrical engineer

Work life

Similar paths

• Computer EngineerDesign the chips, boards and machines that software runs on.
• Electrical Engineering TechnologistTurn an engineer's drawing into a working circuit, then test it until you know exactly why it fails.
• Mechanical EngineerDesign anything that moves, heats, cools or carries a load. The broadest engineering degree there is.

The country runs on three separate grids

The lower 48 states are split into the Eastern Interconnection, the Western Interconnection and a third grid covering most of Texas. They are only loosely tied together, which is why a failure in one rarely darkens the others, and why Texas can be on its own in a storm.

There was a war over alternating current

In the 1880s Thomas Edison pushed direct current while George Westinghouse and Nikola Tesla backed alternating current. Alternating current won because it travels far more cheaply over long distances, which is why wall outlets today run on it.

Even the first exam has branches

The Fundamentals of Engineering exam is 110 questions over 5 hours and 20 minutes of exam time, and electrical candidates choose between three versions: computer engineering, electrical and electronics, or power. You pick your future on the day you sit it.

Accreditation is a worldwide system

ABET (the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology), the body whose stamp your degree needs, has approved 4,863 programs at 950 colleges across 42 countries, with more than 200,000 students graduating from them each year.