electronics engineer salary in 2026: BLS data, semiconductor & defense pay, and how to push your number higher

National pay breakdown: every percentile, annual & hourly

The BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey is the single most authoritative wage dataset in the US; it covers roughly 1.2 million establishments and is mandatory for sampled employers to complete. The May 2025 release was published 2026-04-30. Here is the full national distribution for SOC 17-2072 (Electronics Engineers, Except Computer):

The BLS figures are base annual salary and exclude equity, bonuses, signing, and 401k match. For BSEE candidates targeting FAANG silicon teams or top-tier semiconductor designers (Nvidia, AMD, Apple, Broadcom, Qualcomm, Marvell), equity routinely runs 30-60% of base at entry, and 60-150% of base at senior and staff levels. Add a 401k match (typically 4-6% of base) and a target bonus (10-15% of base at most semi employers). The BLS number is your floor for negotiation, not your target.

By experience level: entry, mid-career, senior, and principal

BLS OEWS does not publish wages by years-of-experience, so the percentile-to-experience mapping below pulls from two complementary data sources: the BLS percentile distribution (authoritative for what gets paid) and Levels.fyi self-reported hardware and analog/RF design engineer data at the top semiconductor and FAANG silicon employers (informative for what big-semi pays at each level). Numbers reflect base salary only:

Important framing on the tier table: the gap between "entry" and "entry big-semi" is the biggest career fork in this role. A BSEE who lands at a defense prime or a mid-tier industrial electronics employer (Eaton, Honeywell aerospace, Garmin, Tektronix) starts in the $82K-$115K band; the same BSEE who lands at Nvidia, Apple Silicon, Qualcomm, AMD, or Broadcom starts in the $140K-$170K band with equity on top. Sub-discipline (RF, analog, mixed-signal) and graduate degree (MS or PhD for design roles at FAANG silicon teams) drive most of the differential. The defense roles compound over time through clearances; the big-semi roles compound through stock.

By state: where the wages run highest and where the jobs concentrate

California is both the top-paying state and the largest employer of electronics engineers in the country, an unusual configuration. The state holds more than one in five SOC 17-2072 jobs nationally (20,830 of 96,900) and pays a mean of $161,520, roughly 18% above the national mean. The driver is the San Jose semiconductor cluster (Intel, Nvidia, AMD, Broadcom, Marvell, Lattice, Synopsys, Cadence) plus San Diego (Qualcomm, Northrop Grumman, Cubic) and the Bay Area design houses.

Top 10 states by mean annual wage

Top 10 states by total employment

The defense corridor states are the second cluster. DC ($160,720 mean), Maryland ($153,500), Virginia ($126,230), and New Mexico ($144,540) all post above the national mean for a different reason than California: federal civilian and defense-contractor electronics engineering work concentrated around DC (NSA, DARPA, NRL), Patuxent River (Naval Air), NSA Fort Meade, Sandia and Los Alamos. New Mexico is the cleanest pay-vs-cost-of-living anomaly in this SOC, mean of $144,540 against a state cost-of-living index around 92% of the US average.

Colorado is the surprise on the employment table. The state holds 6,080 SOC 17-2072 jobs (third-highest in the country, behind only California and Texas), concentrated in Denver-Boulder around Lockheed Martin Space, Ball Aerospace, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, L3Harris, and a growing tech-adjacent satellite-and-photonics cluster (Maxar, Sierra Space). Mean wage of $130,650 is right at the national mean and roughly equivalent to the national median, so the state combines reasonable cost of living with one of the densest aerospace-and-defense electronics engineering labor markets in the country.

By metro: top-paying metro areas in the US

San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara is in a class of its own. Mean of $187,710 and median of $194,370 puts the metro roughly 36% above the national mean for SOC 17-2072. The metro employs 5,970 electronics engineers, a location quotient of 8.45 (eight-and-a-half times the national concentration), which means roughly six in every thousand workers in the metro is an electronics engineer. The driver is the dense cluster of Nvidia, Apple, AMD, Broadcom, Marvell, Cadence, Synopsys, Lam Research, Applied Materials, and Synaptics within thirty minutes of each other.

Lexington Park, MD is the under-the-radar metro on the list. Population about 115,000, but it holds 580 electronics engineers at a $152,340 mean because Naval Air Station Patuxent River concentrates the Navy's airborne weapons systems and electronic warfare engineering work there. The metro location quotient is 13.17, the highest in the SOC. Boston ($153,960 mean, 5,460 employed) is the largest high-pay, high-employment metro outside California, with MIT Lincoln Lab, Raytheon, BAE Systems, MITRE, and the Route 128 defense-electronics cluster driving demand. Austin ($152,610 mean, 1,960 employed) has surged since Samsung's Taylor TX fab plus NXP's existing presence; the metro is the fastest-growing major electronics engineering market in the country.

By industry: where the role pays the most

Industry assignment drives a meaningful share of the wage range. Per BLS OEWS May 2025 industry-level estimates for SOC 17-2072:

The pattern for electronics engineers is unusual compared to most engineering SOCs: the top-paying industries and the largest-employing industries are nearly the same set. Computer and Electronic Product Manufacturing (NAICS 334, the semiconductor and electronics manufacturing bucket) is both the second-largest employer (22,120) and the second-highest paying ($147,540 mean). Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services (NAICS 541, where most defense-contractor electronics engineers live) is the largest employer (22,560) at $146,990 mean. That overlap is rare; most SOCs show a big gap between "where the jobs are" and "where the pay is."

The Federal, State, and Local Government bucket (14,120 employed, $134,350 mean) captures direct civilian-service electronics engineers at NSA, DARPA, NRL, NIST, NASA, the Naval Surface Warfare Centers, the Air Force Research Lab, and the DOE labs (Sandia, Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore). These roles pay below the top private-sector tier but offer pension benefits, locality pay (Bay Area, DC, San Diego all carry 30%+ locality adjustments), and clearance-eligible career paths that often lead into higher-paying defense-contractor seats later. Telecommunications (NAICS 517) at 13,950 employed is the third-largest bucket and the lowest-paying common one at $120,510, dominated by AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Comcast network engineering.

By employer: what specific companies pay

The BLS does not publish employer-specific wages, so this section pulls from Levels.fyi self-reported total compensation data for hardware, analog, RF, mixed-signal, and digital design engineers, plus published defense-contractor salary ranges from federal data and job-posting aggregation. Big-semi and FAANG silicon numbers are total compensation including base, equity, and bonus; defense and industrial numbers are base salary only because equity is a smaller component. Treat all of these as ranges, not offers.

The pattern that matters: at the same career level, a senior electronics engineer at Nvidia or AMD on a vested four-year RSU grant can clear two to three times the total compensation of a senior engineer at Lockheed or Raytheon on cash-only base plus pension. The trade-off is the variance: big-semi equity is volatile and the AI hardware cycle that produced the 2023-2025 windfalls is not guaranteed to continue. Defense is steady, slower-growing, and the clearance premium compounds across an entire career rather than peaking in a single equity vintage.

By sub-discipline: where inside electronics engineering the money is

The electronics engineer SOC absorbs several distinct sub-disciplines that pay quite differently. The differential is driven by talent-pool size; the smallest pools (analog, mixed-signal, RF, mmWave) pay the largest premiums.

Embedded systems engineer is the most-common sub-title in this SOC and the easiest to enter, which is also why it pays at or just below the SOC median. Firmware-on-an-MCU work (STM32, ESP32, NXP Kinetis, Nordic nRF) is the broadest market for new BSEE and BSEET graduates, but the wage compression at the entry tier is real. Engineers who want to stay in embedded but raise the ceiling typically pivot into safety-critical embedded (DO-178C for aerospace, ISO 26262 for automotive), embedded Linux at the silicon-vendor BSP level, or low-level real-time control for robotics and motion systems.

Year-over-year wage trend

BLS OEWS releases roll one year at a time. Here is how electronics engineer pay has moved across the last three releases:

For context: IEEE-USA's 2024 member salary survey reported median total annual income of $176,000 for US electrical and electronics engineers (a broader sample than SOC 17-2072 because it includes self-employed and management). The all-engineering BLS median is roughly $103K, so SOC 17-2072 sits about 26% above the engineering-wide median. The CHIPS Act is the structural driver through at least 2030: $52.7 billion in semiconductor manufacturing incentives plus a 25% investment tax credit have funded Intel Ohio, TSMC Arizona, Samsung Texas, Micron New York, GlobalFoundries New York, and Texas Instruments Sherman, all of which will need design and process electronics engineers through the build-out phase and beyond.

How to push your electronics engineer salary higher: three real levers

Lever 1: Pick a high-pay sub-discipline early

Sub-discipline drives the largest sustained pay differential in this SOC, and it is set early in your career by what coursework you take, what internships you accept, and what your first one or two roles are. Analog and mixed-signal IC design pay 15-25% over digital RTL at the same career level because the talent pool is much smaller. RF and microwave (especially mmWave and phased-array work) pay 10-25% over digital at the same level for the same reason. The catch is that breaking into analog or RF later in your career is genuinely hard, the design intuition compounds over years of analog circuit work and is difficult to retrofit. If you are a current EE undergrad, weight your electives toward analog circuit design, RF and microwave engineering, and one mixed-signal verification course; if you are an early-career engineer, accept the first analog or RF role you can get even at a small pay haircut, the compounding pays back over years.

Lever 2: Stack a security clearance for the defense electronics premium

A Top Secret clearance with SCI eligibility adds 15-30% to base salary at the major defense electronics primes (Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, BAE Systems, L3Harris, General Dynamics, Boeing Defense), and a polygraphed TS/SCI in a hard niche (electronic warfare, signal intelligence, space-based sensors) can add 25-40% to total compensation. The premium exists because the candidate pool with both the engineering skill and the active clearance is small. Two practical entry paths: (1) take a federal civilian role at NSA, NRL, NIST, or one of the DOE labs straight out of school, get sponsored for the clearance, then move to a private-sector defense contractor seat after three to five years; or (2) accept an entry-level role at a defense prime that explicitly sponsors clearance investigations for new hires (the primes do this routinely for BSEE candidates from ABET-accredited programs). The clearance compounds across an entire career and travels with you between cleared employers.

Lever 3: Target FAANG or big-semi for equity-driven total compensation

At the same career level, a senior electronics engineer at Nvidia, AMD, Apple Silicon, Broadcom, or Qualcomm on a vested four-year RSU grant clears roughly two to three times the total compensation of a senior engineer at a defense prime on cash-only base. The 2023-2025 AI hardware cycle produced multi-year RSU windfalls at Nvidia in particular (staff-tier total comp commonly past $1M during recent vintages). The variance is real, equity is volatile and the next product cycle is never guaranteed, but for a 5-15 year career window the expected value at big-semi is structurally higher than at traditional employers. The leverage points are: an MSEE or PhD in a high-pay sub-discipline (analog, mixed-signal, RF, computer architecture, ML hardware), internships at the target employer, and willingness to relocate to the Bay Area, San Diego, Austin, or Boulder. See our electronics engineer career guide for the degree-program-to-employer pipeline.

Electronics engineer salary vs adjacent roles

Useful for orienting your next career move or comparing offers across SOCs:

The two cleanest in-field moves: (1) up the engineering-tier ladder through a computer hardware engineer title at a big-semi or FAANG silicon team, where the pay distribution sits even higher than SOC 17-2072, or (2) sideways into aerospace electronics work at the defense primes for the clearance-premium career arc.

Sources & methodology

All wage and employment data on this page is sourced from primary US government publications, IEEE salary surveys, and self-reported compensation databases, retrieved 2026-05-28:

• BLS OEWS, 17-2072 Electronics Engineers, Except Computer, May 2025 national release.
• BLS OEWS state-level estimates (oesm25st.zip), used for all state tables.
• BLS OEWS metropolitan area estimates (oesm25ma.zip), used for metro tables.
• BLS OEWS industry-level estimates (oesm25in4.zip), used for industry tables.
• BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, for 2024-2034 employment projections.
• BEA Regional Price Parities, used for cost-of-living context.
• Levels.fyi, hardware / analog / RF / digital design engineer ranges, used for big-semi and FAANG total-compensation tables.
• IEEE-USA Salary & Benefits Survey, used for sub-discipline differentials and overall member-median benchmarks.
• Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA), for unfilled-posting tracking and CHIPS-Act employment impact.
• US Department of Commerce, CHIPS and Science Act, for funding allocation and tax-credit structure.

FAANG and big-semi (Nvidia, AMD, Apple, Qualcomm, Broadcom, Intel) compensation ranges are Levels.fyi self-reported total compensation, base plus annualized equity plus target bonus. Defense-prime ranges are base salary only, compiled from federal pay transparency disclosures and aggregated postings; cleared-role premiums layer on top. Treat all employer figures as ranges, not offers.