---
title: "Solar Energy Systems Engineer"
description: "Perform site-specific engineering analysis or evaluation of energy efficiency and solar projects involving residential, commercial, or industrial…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/solar-energy-systems-engineer"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Solar Energy Systems Engineer

**Category:** Architecture and Engineering · **SOC code:** 17-2199 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 17-2199.11

Perform site-specific engineering analysis or evaluation of energy efficiency and solar projects involving residential, commercial, or industrial customers. Design solar domestic hot water and space heating systems for new and existing structures, applying knowledge of structural energy requirements, local climates, solar technology, and thermodynamics.

Also advertised as: Consulting Engineer; Engineer; Photovoltaic System Designer (PV System Designer); Power Systems Engineer; Project Engineer; Research Engineer; Solar Design Engineer; Solar Designer.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $122,930 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $59.10/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $66,810 to $189,950, with the middle half between $90,970 and $158,090
- **Total US employment:** 154,070
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +3.7% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 8,800 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 41/100 — 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 154,070 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $66,810 |
| 25th | $90,970 |
| 50th (median) | $122,930 |
| 75th | $158,090 |
| 90th | $189,950 |
| Mean (average) | $125,330 |

### 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 | $162,070 | $175,758 | 2,190 |
| AL | $152,550 | $171,746 | 3,460 |
| DC | $151,920 | $138,234 | 3,560 |
| VA | $148,160 | $146,542 | 5,060 |
| AK | $142,390 | $139,108 | 200 |
| WA | $134,570 | $125,751 | 3,580 |
| CO | $132,590 | $128,663 | 2,540 |
| NJ | $132,450 | $121,732 | 4,540 |
| MA | $131,260 | $124,115 | 2,850 |
| ID | $130,970 | $137,150 | 560 |
| CA | $130,850 | $118,181 | 28,610 |
| MD | $129,770 | $123,639 | 7,340 |
| NH | $128,130 | $123,007 | 610 |
| VT | $126,550 | $129,188 | 390 |
| CT | $124,110 | $119,786 | 2,430 |

38 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 53 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/solar-energy-systems-engineer/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/solar-energy-systems-engineer.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 166,700 in the 2025–2035 base year to 173,000 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 6,200 jobs, or +3.7%. About as fast as average: 3.7% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 8,800 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 | 55.6% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 11.1% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 11.1% |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 7.4% |
| Some College Courses | 7.4% |
| Less than a High School Diploma | 3.7% |

## What the work involves

- Conduct engineering site audits to collect structural, electrical, and related site information for use in the design of residential or commercial solar power systems.
- Create plans for solar energy system development, monitoring, and evaluation activities.
- Create electrical single-line diagrams, panel schedules, or connection diagrams for solar electric systems, using computer-aided design (CAD) software.
- Perform computer simulation of solar photovoltaic (PV) generation system performance or energy production to optimize efficiency.
- Provide technical direction or support to installation teams during installation, start-up, testing, system commissioning, or performance monitoring.
- Review specifications and recommend engineering or manufacturing changes to achieve solar design objectives.
- Develop standard operation procedures and quality or safety standards for solar installation work.
- Design or coordinate design of photovoltaic (PV) or solar thermal systems, including system components, for residential and commercial buildings.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Science — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.3 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 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Evaluation — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Engineering and Technology — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Design — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Building and Construction — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mechanical — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Written Comprehension — 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
- Oral Expression — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Fluency of Ideas — importance 3.9 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 | 5.97 |
| I — Investigative | 5.02 |
| C — Conventional | 3.96 |
| E — Enterprising | 3.05 |
| A — Artistic | 2.11 |
| S — Social | 1.90 |

### 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 | 88.4 |
| ISTJ | 86.7 |
| INTJ | 76.1 |
| INTP | 65.7 |
| ESTJ | 65.7 |

Best-fitting types: ISTP, ISTJ.

## Related occupations

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

- [Solar Sales Representative and Assessor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/solar-sales-representative-and-assessor) — median $104,920
- [Solar Energy Installation Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/solar-energy-installation-manager) — median $79,920
- [Solar Thermal Installer and Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/solar-thermal-installer-and-technician) — median $63,800
- [Energy Engineer, Except Wind and Solar](https://nuecareer.com/careers/energy-engineer) — median $122,930
- [Wind Energy Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/wind-energy-engineer) — median $122,930
- [Electrical Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/electrical-engineer) — median $120,630
- [Wind Energy Development Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/wind-energy-development-manager) — median $141,900
- [Energy Auditor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/energy-auditor) — median $74,690
- [Mechanical Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/mechanical-engineer) — median $104,110
- [Electronics Engineer, Except Computer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/electronics-engineer) — median $130,220

## 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/solar-energy-systems-engineer