Systems Engineer
What Does a Professional in this Career Do?
A Systems Engineer creates computer and data communication networks for companies and organizations. Plans and designs layout for a network, determines the hardware needed and placement of computers, servers, cables and routers; determines data storage, system capacity, and speed.
Job Outlook
There were 2514 Systems Engineer job postings in North Carolina in the past year and 93203 in the United States.
In combination with other careers in the Computer Systems Engineer / Architect industry, which includes the Systems Engineer career, the following graph shows the number of people employed for each year since 2016:
Salary
Many new Systems Engineer jobs have salaries estimated to be in the following ranges, based on the requirements and responsibilities listed in job postings from the past year.
National
The average estimated salary in the United States for this career, based on job postings in the past year, is $129,508.
State
The average estimated salary in North Carolina for this career, based on job postings in the past year, is $122,434.
Percentiles represent the percentage that is lower than the value. For example, 25% of estimated salaries for Systems Engineer postings in the United States in the past year were lower than $109,880.
Education and Experience
Posted Systems Engineer jobs typically require the following level of education. The numbers below are based on job postings in the United States from the past year. Not all job postings list education requirements.
| Education Level | Percentage |
|---|---|
| Associate's Degree | 0% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 68.95% |
| Master's Degree | 26.32% |
| Doctoral Degree | 7.89% |
| Other | 3.84% |
Posted Systems Engineer jobs typically require the following number of years of experience. The numbers below are based on job postings in the United States from the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.
| Years of Experience | Percentage |
|---|---|
| 0 to 2 years | 9.54% |
| 3 to 5 years | 42.42% |
| 6 to 8 years | 23.36% |
| 9+ years | 24.68% |
Skills
Below are listings of the most common general and specialized skills Systems Engineer positions expect applicants to have as well as the most common skills that distinguish individuals from their peers. The percentage of job postings that specifically mention each skill is also listed.
Baseline Skills
A skill that is required across a broad range of occupations, including this one.
- Communication (40.02%)
- Management (33.2%)
- Troubleshooting (Problem Solving) (31.82%)
- Operations (30.8%)
- Problem Solving (26.92%)
- Leadership (21.99%)
- Planning (18.71%)
- Innovation (13.79%)
- Reliability (11.75%)
- Information Technology (11.49%)
Defining Skills
A core skill for this occupation, it occurs frequently in job postings.
- Go (Programming Language) (8.71%)
- Site Reliability Engineering (11.75%)
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC) (9.31%)
- Systems Engineering (55.97%)
- Automation (30.03%)
- Amazon Web Services (23.51%)
- Computer Science (36%)
- Python (Programming Language) (29.89%)
- Model Based Systems Engineering (7.14%)
- Kubernetes (17.84%)
- Product Family Engineering (11.25%)
- Ansible (11.07%)
- Observability (8%)
- Terraform (13.84%)
Necessary Skills
A skill that is requested frequently in this occupation but isn’t specific to it.
- Bash (Scripting Language) (7.62%)
- Cloud Services (6.9%)
- Workflow Management (9.43%)
- Git (Version Control System) (5.98%)
- Continuous Improvement Process (7.15%)
- Google Cloud Platform (GCP) (6.76%)
- Agile Methodology (19.18%)
- Artificial Intelligence (6.93%)
- Data Analysis (6.83%)
- Active Directory (7.31%)
- Application Programming Interface (API) (8.94%)
- Java (Programming Language) (13.15%)
- Software Development (16.06%)
- JIRA (7.35%)
- Microsoft Azure (18.99%)
- Software As A Service (SaaS) (3.87%)
- Continuous Integration (4.92%)
- Cloud Infrastructure (6.56%)
- C++ (Programming Language) (6.9%)
- Configuration Management (9.71%)
- Electrical Engineering (6.63%)
- System Administration (7.45%)
- Computer Engineering (7.32%)
- DevOps (14.79%)
- Debugging (7.95%)
- Linux (17.92%)
- Operating Systems (13.02%)
- Github (5.36%)
- Machine Learning (6.86%)
- Scalability (20.76%)
- Root Cause Analysis (6.76%)
- SQL (Programming Language) (10.62%)
- Tooling (5.73%)
- Project Management (11.91%)
- CI/CD (14.77%)
- New Product Development (5.86%)
- Scripting (19.34%)
- Windows PowerShell (10.37%)
- Public Cloud (4.51%)
- Test Planning (6.48%)
- Software Engineering (18.06%)
- Systems Integration (9.22%)
- Systems Design (10.96%)
- Docker (Software) (10.56%)
- Microservices (5.95%)
- Jenkins (7.35%)
- Technical Leadership (6.73%)
Distinguishing Skills
A skill that may distinguish a subset of the occupation.
- Infrastructure Automation (2.21%)
- AWS CloudFormation (3.25%)
- Puppet (Configuration Management Tool) (3.75%)
- Hyper-V (2.38%)
- Concept Of Operations (3.68%)
- Telemetry (2.11%)
- Reliability Engineering (4.92%)
- Verification And Validation (5.38%)
- Prometheus (Software) (4.58%)
- Linux Administration (1.89%)
- VMware VSphere (1.92%)
- Grafana (5.19%)
- Dynatrace (2.78%)
- Systems Modeling Language (2.9%)
- GitOps (1.49%)
- Datadog (3.1%)
Salary Boosting Skills
A professional who wishes to excel in this career path may consider developing the following highly valued skills. The percentage of job postings that specifically mention each skill is listed.
- Infrastructure Automation (3.34%)
- Puppet (Configuration Management Tool) (5.66%)
- Observability (12.09%)
- GitOps (2.25%)
- Go (Programming Language) (13.16%)
- AWS CloudFormation (4.9%)
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC) (14.06%)
- Amazon Web Services (35.51%)
- Computer Science (54.39%)
- Hyper-V (3.6%)
- Linux Administration (2.86%)
- Concept Of Operations (5.56%)
- Product Family Engineering (17%)
- Reliability Engineering (7.44%)
- Ansible (16.73%)
- Prometheus (Software) (6.92%)
- Systems Modeling Language (4.39%)
- VMware VSphere (2.89%)
- Datadog (4.68%)
- Grafana (7.84%)
- Kubernetes (26.95%)
- Terraform (20.91%)
Alternative Job Titles
Sometimes employers post jobs with Systems Engineer skills but a different job title. Some common alternative job titles include:
- Site Reliability Engineer
- Platform Engineer
- Platform Software Engineer
- Principal Systems Engineer
- Infrastructure Engineer
- Reliability Engineer
- Data Platform Engineer
- Cloud Platform Engineer
- IT Systems Engineer
Similar Occupations
If you are interested in exploring occupations with similar skills, you may want to research the following job titles. Note that we only list occupations that have at least one corresponding NC State Online and Distance Education program.
Common Employers
Here are the employers that have posted the most Systems Engineer jobs in the past year along with how many they have posted.
United States
- Raytheon Technologies (2378)
- Northrop Grumman (1690)
- Apple (1608)
- Ford (1346)
- Marriott International (1214)
- Lockheed Martin (1169)
- L3Harris Technologies (1147)
- Amazon (1106)
- Leidos (896)
- Capital One (879)
North Carolina
- Wells Fargo (62)
- Cisco (50)
- Truist Financial (48)
- First Citizens Bank (38)
- The Hartford (32)
- Booz Allen Hamilton (31)
- Insight Global (29)
- Motion Recruitment (29)
- Genesis10 (27)
- CACI International (27)
NC State Programs Relevant to this Career
If you are interested in preparing for a career in this field, the following NC State Online and Distance Education programs offer a great place to start!
All wages, job posting statistics, employment trend projections, and information about skill desirability on this page represents historical data and does not guarantee future conditions. Data is provided by and downloaded regularly from Lightcast. For more information about how Lightcast gathers data and what it represents, see Lightcast Data: Basic Overview on Lightcast's Knowledge Base website.