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Civil Engineering is one of the oldest engineering professions and the biggest in terms of scale, options and workforce. Because of how big and complicated civil engineering can be, it can be difficult to understand the huge work opportunities available in this field. Therefore, we will break down those options and how easy to work in them? What salary should you expect now and 10 years later? Is it an off-site or onsite job, or can you do it from home?
Disclaimer: Salary is based on averaged US Salary income collected from Indeed, ZipRecruiter, PayScale, other income report websites and private sources. The actual salary might differ slightly based on location, company and other factors.
1- Structural Engineer
| Structural Engineer | Insights |
|---|---|
| Workplace | Usually, office-based with some flexibility to work from home. |
| Type | Design |
| Entry Level Salary | $60,000 |
| Mid-Career Salary | $85,000 |
| Senior Level Salary | $105,000 |
Structural Engineers provide the building blueprint. They are the bread and butter of civil engineering. They design everything from buildings, bridges and dams to ensure they are fit for purpose and can last for a very long time without issues.
Structural Engineers work behind the scene to ensure that everything is designed without errors. A person working in structural engineering must have a solid understanding of design codes and standards while using various design software.
The work is very much office-based, whit some opportunities for site visits to ensure that the construction is executed according to the designer’s intent. This places a huge responsibility on the structural engineer and makes it one of the most difficult career options to get into.
Structural engineers have the last say when it comes to making critical decisions. Their authority within the civil engineering field is unparalleled.
2- Construction Management Engineer
| Project Engineer | Insights |
|---|---|
| Workplace | Onsite & Office-based |
| Type | Management, quality control and safety control |
| Entry Level Salary | $71,000 |
| Mid-Career Salary | $85,000 |
| Senior Level Salary | $128,000 |
Project engineers are the ones who execute the design. You can be a site-based engineer, where engineers must ensure that work is done to the highest quality while managing workers and communicating with the client. There are also project managers who are offsite-based. Those are the people in charge of the project schedule, budget and cost estimation. However, in some small firms, engineers might be in charge of doing all those things simultaneously.
Construction management is the biggest option in civil engineering. While it takes a small team of structural engineers to design a building, the project managers required are at least one and a half times more than the number of people who designed it.
Competition is also quite high in this field as the technical skills required are less than structural engineering, which attracts many engineers. On the other hand, project management requires a high level of communication and people skills. Engineers need to delegate jobs and manage people, which can be challenging. If you are thinking of following this career path, we encourage you to read: Top 7 Personality Traits Of Project Manager For Immediate Success.
3- Geotechnical Engineer
| Geotechnical Engineer | Insights |
|---|---|
| Workplace | Mostly office based with some occasional site visits |
| Type | Design |
| Entry Level Salary | $65,000 |
| Mid-Career Salary | $85,000 |
| Senior Level Salary | $115,000 |
Geotechnical engineers are responsible for analysing earth and soil behaviour when designing foundations. Geotechnical Engineers is an essential field in civil engineering. Without the technical expertise of those engineers, no building, bridge or dam will be built.
Due to the difficulty in analysing earth and soil behaviour, geotechnical engineering is where most technical innovation and breakthrough happens.
Geotechnical engineering is a technical branch of civil engineering and is in the same league as structural engineering. If you work as a geotechnical engineer, you will be working on designing foundations such as piles and shallow foundations, designing retaining walls and doing soil testing.
A geotechnical engineer usually works from the office, especially the designers, with some site work and lab testing. They have a big authority in civil engineering as the responsibility they take is quite large.
4- Environmental Engineer
| Environmental Engineer | Insights |
|---|---|
| Workplace | Onsite & Office-based with some flexibility to work from home for project managers |
| Type | Design, planning and management |
| Entry Level Salary | $65,000 |
| Mid-Career Salary | $88,000 |
| Senior Level Salary | $114,000 |
Environmental engineers are responsible for developing solutions to environmental problems such as wastewater treatment, providing drinkable water, sediment treatments, and air and noise pollution. This is a very niche branch in civil engineering that even universities offer a complete environmental engineering course tailored for this branch and separate from civil engineering courses.
Environmental engineers get to work on exciting projects that aim to make cities liveable for people with minimal impact of pollution. Providing drinking water and dealing with water treatment are relevant to environmental engineers’ work.
There are many areas of work within environmental engineering. It can be a project management position or involved in the core problems. Some of the work involves planning and future projections to improve the environment. Usually, the work is a hybrid between office and site with some flexibility to work from home.
5- Hydraulic Engineer
| Hydraulic Engineer | Insights |
|---|---|
| Workplace | Usually, office-based |
| Type | Design |
| Entry Level Salary | $60,000 |
| Mid-Career Salary | $84,000 |
| Senior Level Salary | $110,000 |
Hydraulic Engineers analyse the impact of water, rainwater runoff and floods and provide a solution to reduce their impact. Hydraulic engineers work on flood analysis reports to determine the chances of flood occurrence in 100 or 1000 years. This significantly helps civil engineers design structures to combat floods using stormwater runoff and artificial lakes to store and dispose of excess water. Without hydraulic engineers, cities will be flooded.
They are also involved in dam building and design due to their knowledge in fluid mechanics and other areas such as generating electricity from hydroelectric power turbines.
Most hydraulic engineers are designers, so the job is mostly office-based with occasional site visits. This is quite in demand branch of civil engineering, and most engineers go to this branch due to its challenging aspect and interesting fluid behaviour.
6- Bridge Engineer
| Bridge Engineer | Insights |
|---|---|
| Workplace | Depending on the position; it can be office or site based |
| Type | Design, Management, Maintenance and Monitoring |
| Entry Level Salary | $70,000 |
| Mid-Career Salary | $90,000 |
| Senior Level Salary | $128,000 |
As the name suggests, bridge engineers are in charge of designing, building, monitoring and maintaining bridges. Because bridges have evolved tremendously in the last 100 years, they have become a big branch of civil engineering. Bridge engineers can be designers, project managers and maintenance engineers. Because of that, bridges have evolved and got longer and bigger. Bridge engineers can work either from the office or onsite, depending on the job description.
Bridge engineers can specialise depending on the type of bridges they design, such as steel, timber, post-tensioning, cable-stayed, and suspended bridges. Bridge engineers are also involved in executing the project, which involves developing a plan to build, transport and lift bridge segments.
Building the bridge is one thing, and ensuring the bridge stays operational is another. Bridges require close attention and care to ensure that they do not fall. This includes periodic inspection and maintenance, such as inspecting for cracks and replacing bridge bearings and expansion joints.
7- Transport & Planning Engineer
| Transport Engineer | Insights |
|---|---|
| Workplace | An office-based job with some flexibility to work from home |
| Type | Planning and management |
| Entry Level Salary | $71,000 |
| Mid-Career Salary | $88,000 |
| Senior Level Salary | $128,000 |
Transport and planning engineers are responsible for urban development and shaping how cities look as transport is vital to every city. Transport engineers shape travel modes in the city; this means developing public transport systems, roads, and motorways.
Transport engineers are always forward-thinking people; because travel congestion is a massive issue in urban transport, which is why transport engineers always aim to improve public transport such as trains, metro, and buses against private transport.
Planning is the essence of this civil engineering branch, focusing on reducing travel time and developing roads. Transport engineering also incorporates elements of project management, but the job is mostly office-based.
Job opportunities are usually government-related as most roads, and public transport systems are government-owned, with some private companies that develop toll motorways and other modes of transport.
8- Mining Engineer
| Mining Engineer | Insights |
|---|---|
| Workplace | Site-based and involve living away from home |
| Type | Design, quality control, project management and safety control |
| Entry Level Salary | $75,000 |
| Mid-Career Salary | $95,000 |
| Senior Level Salary | $148,000 |
Not to be confused with cryptocurrency mining!!!
Mining is a niche field of civil engineering, and sometimes universities offer it as a separate course to civil engineering. Mining engineers must have combined knowledge of geotechnical, mining, material and project management. Engineers are responsible for extracting minerals and developing new mines.
Safety is a major part of working at mines. Safety, in general, is a big part of civil engineering as usually human lives are at risk. However, for mines, safety is taken to a whole new level. Mining engineers are responsible for quality and safety assurance which involves monitoring poisonous gases such as methane and assessing the safety of tunnels and the likelihood of collapse, which is prevented by strengthening solution advice by the mining engineer.
Mines are located away from cities, usually in deserts, making “living away from home” the norm for mining engineers. Because of safety concerns and living away from home arrangements, this branch of civil engineering pays very well compared to other fields.
9- Marine & Coastal Engineer
| Marine & Coastal Engineer | Insights |
|---|---|
| Workplace | Site and office-based |
| Type | Maintenance, design, management and monitoring |
| Entry Level Salary | $70,000 |
| Mid-Career Salary | $92,000 |
| Senior Level Salary | $115,000 |
This small civil engineering field is dedicated to marine and coastal structures. Usually, structures close to the coast are subject to water erosion and corrosion, which requires special care and solutions to ensure those structures stay protected, such as cathodic protection and coating.
People who work in this field are quite specialised in structure remediation. This includes maintaining structures that are structurally deteriorating or losing their strength. This can include fixing exposed and rusted steel reinforcement, strengthening such as post-tensioning, steel strengthening or carbon fibre strengthening.
Marine engineers are very solution-focused people. Working in this field will involve working on different design, building and maintenance problems. This can even be challenging to other civil engineers due to the complexity of this field. Depending on the type of work, this job can be office or site-based.
10- Earthquake & Seismic Engineer
| Earthquake Engineer | Insights |
|---|---|
| Workplace | Office-based |
| Type | Design |
| Entry Level Salary | $60,000 |
| Mid-Career Salary | $85,000 |
| Senior Level Salary | $110,000 |
This is also a very specialised branch of civil engineering that involves the study of earthquakes on buildings and structures. The seismic engineer’s responsibility is to assess structures’ behaviour in earthquakes and find a solution to dampen those forces.
This is a very technical field and heavenly involved during the design phase, especially for big structures such as skyscrapers and long-span bridges, as they are vulnerable to earthquakes. Since all structures can move with wind and earthquakes (If you did not know that), the engineer’s mission is to find the earthquake force and improve the structure design by dampening those forces.
This field involves the use of highly complex testing machines and software. Engineers in this field are usually in a different league than other civil engineering branches, requiring lots of experience to become a professional seismic engineers. The job is office-based with some site works.
11- Architectural Engineer
| Architectural Engineer | Insights |
|---|---|
| Workplace | Office-based with some flexibility to work from home |
| Type | Design |
| Entry Level Salary | $70,000 |
| Mid-Career Salary | $83,000 |
| Senior Level Salary | $115,000 |
Architectural engineering is a hybrid between structural engineering and architecture. Engineers who go to architectural engineering are in charge of designing structures while working with architects.
Because it can be difficult to communicate between architects and structural engineers because one cares about aesthetics and the other cares about structural integrity, architectural engineers break the barrier between those disciplines by ensuring that both requirements are met in designing structures. However, with enough experience, the Structural Engineer can do the architectural engineering job.
This branch of civil engineering is usually offered as a double degree course in most universities, and the graduate can work in either engineering or architectural firms. This job is very office-based and requires effective communication between those disciplines.
12- Survey Engineer
| Survey Engineer | Insights |
|---|---|
| Workplace | Office and site based |
| Type | Mapping and data collection |
| Entry Level Salary | $60,000 |
| Mid-Career Salary | $73,000 |
| Senior Level Salary | $105,000 |
The Surveyor engineer is in charge of collecting data on land size and shape (2D and 3D) to produce references for the Civil Engineer to follow to produce a structural blueprint. This is a critical area in civil engineering, and it is in demand due to the importance of the surveyor in producing plans, charts and topographic plans for other engineers to follow.
Surveyors are required in every project step (Design, execution and completion), making them essential for other engineers. This field can be more site-based than office-based. The surveyor gets to see cool things and different stages of the project.
Because this field can be quite different from other civil engineering fields, it can be offered as a separate course. The surveyor does not need to know much about structural design but needs to know a lot about data collection and mapping using many tools such as theodolite and dumpy level and other mapping and measuring tools.
13- Wind Engineer
| Wind Engineer | Insights |
|---|---|
| Workplace | Office-based |
| Type | Design |
| Entry Level Salary | $60,000 |
| Mid-Career Salary | $88,000 |
| Senior Level Salary | $150,000 |
Wind engineers study the effect of wind on structures. Yes, wind effect structures and can even make them collapse and fail. This is a very specialised area within structural engineering focused on big structures.
To become a wind engineer, you have to do structural engineering. However, a few specialised companies can offer a wind engineer job that only works on big structures using computer analysis and wind tunnel testing to understand the wind effect on those structures.
Most of the wind engineer job is done by the Structural engineer, especially in not-so-complicated designs where wind effects can be understood using final element analysis programs. This is a design job, and it is office-based only.
14- Material and Laboratory Engineer
| Material Engineer | Insights |
|---|---|
| Workplace | Office and lab-based |
| Type | Testing |
| Entry Level Salary | $63,000 |
| Mid-Career Salary | $89,000 |
| Senior Level Salary | $155,000 |
Material engineers test the strength of materials and ensure they are up to the desired building requirements. This job is based in labs and is related to testing material strength such as stress, strain, compressive strength, and creep.
To build structures, you need building materials such as steel and concrete. Those materials need to have desired strength requirements to ensure that structures are built according to the designer’s requirements. This is where the material engineer comes in to ensure those materials are tested and comply with the design requirements.
Material engineering is sometimes considered a separate field from civil engineering. However, because there are huge correlations between the two fields, civil engineers can work in the laboratory next to material engineers.
15- Univesity Teacher In Civil Engineering
| Professor Civil Engineer | Insights |
|---|---|
| Workplace | Office and lab-based |
| Type | Academic research and teaching |
| Entry Level Salary | $80,000 |
| Mid-Career Salary | $130,000 |
| Senior Level Salary | $205,000 |
While you can work in the field as a civil engineer, you can also choose to train the next generation of civil engineering by becoming a university professor. You can also be involved in academic research, which involves testing new materials and making breakthroughs in new ways to construct and design structures.
To become an academic, you need to pursue higher education. This involves completing masters and PhD degrees. Becoming an academic takes years of study and research where you have to offer something of value to the academic community in terms of research and innovative breakthrough.
Which Civil Engineering Career Path You Should Follow?
It will be easier to follow your passion. If you have read this far, you will realise that everything is connected. It is a network of engineers working together to achieve something big. One civil engineer can not achieve anything; you need a group of dedicated people willing to do everything to ensure that things are done to the finest details without errors.
In the end, there are five areas in civil engineering you can work in: design, management, consulting, planning and testing. Once you figure out which area best represents your goals, choosing the civil engineering branch becomes easy. This is a critical process you must figure out even before entering university, as most courses specialise students in those branches in their third year.
Safety is a big thing in civil engineering which is where the biggest risk lies when working in this field. It does not matter which option you choose; you still have to consider safety. Everything has to be designed and built to perfection with special safety rules in place during construction to ensure minimal harm to human lives. The danger is very real in this field, so civil engineers spend a considerable chunk of their time thinking about the safest way to execute things.
Moreover, courses you take at university are designed to train you for almost all those branches, so even if you start your career in design, you can still switch to management and vice versa.
Ultimately, civil engineering is very big and has huge demand and graduate intake. Construction projects never end, and there will always be some level of demand. Therefore, it can also be beneficial to follow market demand when choosing one of the options. In this post, we provide insights into some civil engineering jobs that are in high demand: Are Civil Engineers in Demand?
How Long It Takes to Become a Civil Engineer?
Generally, it takes 4 years of university education to become a civil engineer where you can work in the industry. Engineers are usually eligible to take their PE exam or professional engineering test to become licenced engineers 5 years after working in the industry. However, getting your PE is not very essential to your career unless it is a requirement by your company.
If you decide to continue your education, it can take up to 2 years to gain your master’s degree and another 3-4 years to earn your PhD degree. Overall, study length is usually less than in other engineering professions.
To learn more about engineering courses’ study length and where civil engineering sits, read: How Long Does It Take To Become An Engineer? Full Guide.
Is Civil Engineering a Good Career?
In short, civil engineering can be a very satisfying career. You get to work on many exciting projects where the final product is something tangible that you can see every time you drive by. This makes civil engineers very proud people of their craft.
The experience you built as a civil engineer throughout your career grows with you. This field does not evolve in a crazy way, such as software engineering, which makes engineers better and better with every project they work on.
Moreover, to fully answer how good this field is, we need to touch bases on how difficult it is. Civil engineering is somewhere less complicated compared to other engineering fields because it is a very practical field that relies on common sense. This makes it a very suitable career option for real-life solution-oriented people.
As you have read, civil engineering is massive, and we can not cover all its aspects in one post. For those who are looking to learn more about this wonderful industry, we highly encourage you to read this post: How Hard Is Civil Engineering? 8 Insider Facts U Must Know.
