Design ships. Hulls, stability, structure and propulsion, for the Navy, shipyards and offshore industry.
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Programs in the fields this career usually comes through. Each has its own page: what it takes to get in, the courses you need and what it costs.
The median pay is about $112,230 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $83,010 at the lower end to about $173,330 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
4 to 8 years after high school, on the usual route.
$3,000 to $65,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
No. There is no license to hold, though many employers still ask for training or a certificate.
Very high demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$112,230
Bottom tenth
$83,010
Top tenth
$173,330
The national median is $112,230 a year, the bottom tenth earn $83,010 or less and the top tenth $173,330 or more. The survey counts marine engineers and naval architects together because the two jobs sit side by side on the same projects: the naval architect shapes the ship, the marine engineer designs what drives it.
$99,250 a year
25% of marine engineers and naval architects earn this or less
This covers everyone in the job, not only beginners, because the survey publishes no separate starting figure. Federal civilian jobs at the Navy pay on the General Schedule, the government pay scale, and come with a pension.
$137,690 a year
25% of marine engineers and naval architects earn this or more
The survey does not say who makes up the top quarter. Roles that carry legal sign-off on a design usually want a professional engineer license.
Roughly, all in
$3,000 to $65,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
Webb Institute, a private college that teaches only naval architecture and marine engineering, gives every enrolled United States citizen or permanent resident a full tuition scholarship, so the low end is fees, books and the Fundamentals of Engineering exam. It is a very small school, so that door is very hard to walk through. The high end is the normal route: a four year engineering degree at a public university at in-state rates of $12,000 to $16,000 a year, the Fundamentals of Engineering exam, which is $225, and later the Principles and Practice of Engineering exam at $400 plus your state board's own charges. The maritime academies and the Navy also pay tuition in exchange for a service commitment.
File the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid). Engineering schools also award scholarships, and the maritime academies and the Navy run programs that pay tuition in exchange for a service commitment.
Federal benefits if you work for the Navy
Health insurance, a pension and predictable pay steps on the government scale.
Sea trials and yard visits
Travel to shipyards and out on the water, paid for by the employer.
Security clearance
Common in defense work, and a clearance makes you harder to replace.
Tuition help for a master's degree
Large employers routinely pay for graduate study in hydrodynamics or structures.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
A four year engineering degree, then years of real design work. Very few schools teach it.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Calculus, physics, chemistry and computer science. Sailing, rowing or building boats is genuinely useful context.
Bachelor's degree
4 years
Naval architecture and marine engineering, or mechanical or ocean engineering. Only a few schools in the country run the dedicated program.
Fundamentals of Engineering exam
One exam
Sit it in your final year while the math is fresh. Passing makes you an engineer in training and starts the clock on licensure.
Work under licensed engineers
4 years
Four years of design experience at a shipyard, design firm, classification society or federal agency.
Professional engineer license, if you want it
One exam
The NCEES (National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying) offers a Principles and Practice of Engineering exam in naval architecture and marine engineering, once a year on computer. Your state board issues the license.
Calculus and physics
Fluid mechanics and structures are built directly on both.
Computer science
Modern ship design is modeling, simulation and scripting.
Drafting or design technology
You will live in three dimensional modeling software.
Anything on the water
Sailing, rowing, a summer at a boatyard. It builds intuition the math alone does not.
Engineering licensure in the United States runs through state boards. You pass the Fundamentals of Engineering exam, work about four years under licensed engineers, then sit the Principles and Practice of Engineering exam, which exists in a naval architecture and marine engineering version. Many naval architects never need the license, because many states exempt engineering work done inside a shipyard or a manufacturer. You do need it if you want to run a consultancy, stamp drawings or sign off designs for a client, so plenty of engineers take it anyway to keep the option open.
This is a small field and the school list is short.
Webb Institute
Glen Cove, New York. A small private college where every student studies naval architecture and marine engineering.
United States Naval Academy and the Coast Guard Academy
Education at no cost in exchange for a commissioned service obligation.
State maritime academies
Massachusetts, New York, Maine, California, Texas and Michigan, several with naval architecture or marine engineering degrees.
Large public universities
The University of Michigan, the University of New Orleans and Virginia Tech among others run programs in the field.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Hydrodynamics
Resistance, propulsion and seakeeping. Heavy computational fluid dynamics work, usually a master's degree.
Structural analysis
Finite element modeling of hulls under load, and the core of classification society work.
Offshore and subsea
Floating platforms, wind foundations and installation vessels.
Submarines and naval combatants
Defense work, a clearance, and long stable programs.
A security clearance
Needed for most Navy work, and once you have one you are in a much smaller hiring pool.
Programming
Python and scripting inside design and analysis packages saves weeks of manual work.
Time at sea
A summer on a working vessel changes how you design one.
Student membership in a professional society
The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers runs student chapters, scholarships and a job board.
The Navy and the Coast Guard employ naval architects both as civilian engineers and as commissioned officers. Civilian jobs are posted on the federal hiring site, pay on the General Schedule, the government pay scale, and come with a pension and predictable raises. They are also one of the few places you get handed responsibility for a real ship design early, because the programs are enormous and long running.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Mostly a desk, a large screen and a hull model. Run a stability calculation for a new loading condition, check a structural drawing against class rules, answer a shipyard's question about a bracket that does not fit. A design review meeting where six disciplines argue about the same 200 millimeters of space. Every few months you go to the yard, walk the actual ship, and find out what your drawing looks like in steel.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
Webb Institute in Glen Cove, New York teaches one subject, naval architecture and marine engineering. It gives every enrolled citizen or permanent resident a full-tuition scholarship, guarantees two months of internship a year, and reports 100% of graduates placed in a job or graduate school.
The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers counts about 4,000 members in 95 countries. In a field that size, your reputation travels ahead of you.
Organizations such as the American Bureau of Shipping write the structural rules that commercial ships are built to, and inspect them for decades afterward. Many naval architecture jobs sit inside or around those societies.
Federal projections expect marine engineers and naval architects to grow much faster than average from 2025 to 2035, but the whole group has only about 500 openings a year.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Engineers first, then the rest of the field. See every career in engineering.
Last checked October 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. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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