---
title: "Battery Engineer"
description: "Designs, tests and improves battery cells and packs for electric vehicles, grid storage and electronics."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/battery-engineer"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Battery Engineer

**Category:** Architecture and Engineering · **SOC code:** 17-2131 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 17-2131.00

Designs, tests and improves battery cells and packs for electric vehicles, grid storage and electronics.

Also advertised as: Battery Cell Engineer; Battery Systems Engineer; Electrochemical Engineer; Battery Development Engineer; Battery Pack Engineer.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $112,860 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $54.26/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $72,300 to $175,720, with the middle half between $88,080 and $142,720
- **Total US employment:** 22,770
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +7.5% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 1,300 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 23/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 22,770 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $72,300 |
| 25th | $88,080 |
| 50th (median) | $112,860 |
| 75th | $142,720 |
| 90th | $175,720 |
| Mean (average) | $120,250 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| NM | $165,600 | $179,586 | 450 |
| MD | $140,640 | $133,995 | 740 |
| WA | $139,840 | $130,676 | 1,000 |
| DE | $131,320 | $131,573 | 40 |
| LA | $128,670 | $145,873 | 90 |
| CA | $128,470 | $116,031 | 3,020 |
| IL | $126,620 | $126,673 | 290 |
| NY | $125,900 | $116,659 | 590 |
| CO | $124,030 | $120,357 | 810 |
| AK | $123,360 | $120,517 | 70 |
| OR | $122,850 | $118,855 | 120 |
| CT | $122,300 | $118,039 | 420 |
| SC | $121,610 | $129,719 | 600 |
| FL | $118,780 | $114,859 | 690 |
| TX | $117,700 | $121,269 | 1,440 |

30 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 45 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/battery-engineer/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/battery-engineer.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 23,800 in the 2025–2035 base year to 25,600 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 1,800 jobs, or +7.5%. Much faster than average: 7.5% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 1,300 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 80.0% |
| Doctoral Degree | 8.0% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 4.0% |
| Master's Degree | 4.0% |
| First Professional Degree | 4.0% |

## What the work involves

- Select and evaluate electrode, electrolyte and separator materials
- Build and test prototype cells
- Run cycle life, rate and temperature testing
- Investigate cell failures and thermal runaway events
- Design pack layouts, cooling and battery management systems
- Develop and troubleshoot cell manufacturing processes
- Support safety certification testing

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Science — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Complex Problem Solving — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Quality Control Analysis — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Operations Analysis — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Evaluation — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Operations Monitoring — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Engineering and Technology — importance 4.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Production and Processing — importance 4.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Physics — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Chemistry — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Realistic (R), Investigative (I), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| R — Realistic | 5.88 |
| I — Investigative | 5.87 |
| C — Conventional | 4.32 |
| A — Artistic | 2.54 |
| E — Enterprising | 2.06 |
| S — Social | 1.38 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ISTP | 87.3 |
| ISTJ | 87.1 |
| INTJ | 85.9 |
| INTP | 72.2 |
| ESTJ | 60.0 |

Best-fitting types: ISTP, ISTJ, INTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Materials Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/materials-engineer) — median $112,860
- [Materials Scientist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/materials-scientist) — median $117,790
- [Chemical Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/chemical-engineer) — median $125,040
- [Manufacturing Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/manufacturing-engineer) — median $102,440
- [Industrial Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/industrial-engineer) — median $102,440
- [Mechanical Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/mechanical-engineer) — median $104,110
- [Nanosystems Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/nanosystems-engineer) — median $122,930
- [Nanotechnology Engineering Technologist and Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/nanotechnology-engineering-technologist-and-technician) — median $66,120
- [Commercial and Industrial Designer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/commercial-and-industrial-designer) — median $83,910
- [Electrical Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/electrical-engineer) — median $120,630

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/battery-engineer