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 and system capacity, speed and software needed for a system.
Job Outlook
There were 2483 Systems Engineer job postings in North Carolina in the past year and 100403 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 2015:
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 $122,378.
State
The average estimated salary in North Carolina for this career, based on job postings in the past year, is $115,934.
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 $101,937.
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 | 71.41% |
| Master's Degree | 29.53% |
| Doctoral Degree | 9.55% |
| Other | 4.13% |
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 | 10.63% |
| 3 to 5 years | 41.77% |
| 6 to 8 years | 22.62% |
| 9+ years | 24.97% |
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 (39.61%)
- Management (33.23%)
- Operations (30.49%)
- Troubleshooting (Problem Solving) (29.15%)
- Problem Solving (24.47%)
- Leadership (22.17%)
- Planning (20.63%)
- Innovation (13.32%)
- Writing (12.95%)
- Mathematics (11.58%)
Defining Skills
A core skill for this occupation, it occurs frequently in job postings.
- Systems Engineering (56.72%)
- Computer Science (33.86%)
- Windows Servers (5.06%)
- Concept Of Operations (4.36%)
- Systems Architecture (8.69%)
- Verification And Validation (6.52%)
Necessary Skills
A skill that is requested frequently in this occupation but isn’t specific to it.
- Amazon Web Services (21.13%)
- IT Infrastructure (3.35%)
- Electrical Engineering (10.33%)
- Agile Methodology (19.18%)
- Active Directory (7.07%)
- Automation (27.39%)
- Control Systems (4.42%)
- Software Development (15.92%)
- Microsoft Azure (16.15%)
- Linux (16.78%)
- Python (Programming Language) (28.83%)
- Configuration Management (9.65%)
- Operating Systems (12.36%)
- Test Planning (7.66%)
- Mechanical Engineering (5.11%)
- Requirements Management (5.04%)
- Computer Engineering (8.51%)
- Software Engineering (16.84%)
- Physics (6.25%)
- Project Management (14.47%)
- Systems Design (12.88%)
- New Product Development (7.27%)
- Systems Integration (10.6%)
- Windows PowerShell (9.46%)
- Commissioning (1.43%)
- Scripting (17.83%)
Distinguishing Skills
A skill that may distinguish a subset of the occupation.
- DoDAF (1.84%)
- Traceability (2.78%)
- Hyper-V (1.78%)
- Maintainability (2.97%)
- Model Based Systems Engineering (8.6%)
- Simulink (1.55%)
- Systems Modeling Language (3.71%)
- Functional Analysis (2.2%)
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.
- Puppet (Configuration Management Tool) (4.65%)
- Observability (8.69%)
- Go (Programming Language) (10.2%)
- Site Reliability Engineering (14.18%)
- AWS CloudFormation (4.18%)
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC) (11%)
- Amazon Web Services (29.36%)
- Bash (Scripting Language) (9.57%)
- Containerization (5.99%)
- Cloud Infrastructure (8.4%)
- Computer Science (47.04%)
- Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) (3.68%)
- Hyper-V (2.48%)
- Python (Programming Language) (40.05%)
- Model Based Systems Engineering (11.94%)
- Concept Of Operations (6.06%)
- Product Family Engineering (13%)
- Telemetry (2.77%)
- Ansible (13.22%)
- Prometheus (Software) (4.72%)
- Systems Modeling Language (5.15%)
- Systems Architecture (12.08%)
- System Requirements (5.9%)
- Datadog (3.43%)
- Grafana (5.15%)
- Kubernetes (20.7%)
- Terraform (16.6%)
- Dynatrace (3.65%)
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
- Principal Systems Engineer
- Platform Software Engineer
- Infrastructure Engineer
- Reliability Engineer
- Control Systems Engineer
- Data Platform Engineer
- Cloud Platform 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 (2598)
- Northrop Grumman (2132)
- L3Harris Technologies (1883)
- Marriott International (1758)
- Ford (1592)
- Leidos (1581)
- Amazon (1494)
- Apple (1366)
- Lockheed Martin (1319)
- SAIC (947)
North Carolina
- Wells Fargo (88)
- Allegis Group (45)
- Motion Recruitment (42)
- Cisco (42)
- General Dynamics (39)
- TEKsystems (39)
- Fidelity Investments (33)
- Marriott International (32)
- Actalent (28)
- Booz Allen Hamilton (28)
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.