---
title: "Vice President of Engineering"
description: "The executive who runs a company's engineering department, responsible for people, delivery, budget and engineering culture."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/vice-president-of-engineering"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Vice President of Engineering

**Category:** Management · **SOC code:** 11-3021 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 11-3021.00

The executive who runs a company's engineering department, responsible for people, delivery, budget and engineering culture.

Also advertised as: VP of Engineering; VP Engineering; SVP of Engineering; Vice President, Software Engineering.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $175,140 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $84.20/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $107,550 to $297,510, with the middle half between $138,060 and $220,730
- **Total US employment:** 670,570
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +15.8% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 53,500 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 24/100 — 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 670,570 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $107,550 |
| 25th | $138,060 |
| 50th (median) | $175,140 |
| 75th | $220,730 |
| 90th | $297,510 |
| Mean (average) | $192,160 |

### 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 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| CA | $218,290 | $197,155 | 94,720 |
| MA | $214,960 | $203,258 | 24,910 |
| NY | $214,300 | $198,571 | 48,050 |
| WA | $209,370 | $195,649 | 16,960 |
| NJ | $203,460 | $186,995 | 34,470 |
| VA | $201,490 | $199,290 | 17,550 |
| CO | $199,420 | $193,514 | 11,510 |
| DC | $195,190 | $177,605 | 5,690 |
| NH | $176,540 | $169,481 | 3,810 |
| MN | $176,380 | $178,846 | 10,970 |
| OR | $175,270 | $169,571 | 7,440 |
| GA | $173,940 | $180,636 | 18,560 |
| NC | $172,860 | $183,258 | 25,650 |
| CT | $171,750 | $165,766 | 10,570 |
| IL | $171,730 | $171,802 | 31,680 |

39 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 54 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/vice-president-of-engineering/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/vice-president-of-engineering.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 685,800 in the 2025–2035 base year to 793,900 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 108,100 jobs, or +15.8%. Much faster than average: 15.8% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 53,500 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:** 5 years or more.
- **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 | 47.7% |
| Some College Courses | 26.0% |
| Master's Degree | 14.4% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 5.8% |
| Post-Baccalaureate Certificate | 2.8% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 2.2% |

## What the work involves

- Build and lead a team of engineering directors and managers
- Set engineering goals, budgets and hiring plans
- Report engineering progress and risks to executives and the board
- Design the engineering organization and its processes
- Partner with product and business leaders on company strategy
- Recruit senior engineers and leaders
- Shape engineering culture, career ladders and performance standards

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Critical Thinking — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- 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
- Speaking — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — 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.

- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Evaluation — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Management of Personnel Resources — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Computers and Electronics — importance 4.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Engineering and Technology — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Personnel and Human Resources — importance 3.4 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
- 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
- Inductive 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 Conventional (C), Enterprising (E), Investigative (I).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| C — Conventional | 5.94 |
| E — Enterprising | 5.36 |
| I — Investigative | 4.58 |
| R — Realistic | 2.68 |
| S — Social | 2.35 |
| A — Artistic | 1.47 |

### 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) |
| --- | --- |
| ESTJ | 79.8 |
| ISTJ | 76.0 |
| ENTJ | 68.8 |
| INTJ | 62.7 |
| ESFJ | 61.3 |

Best-fitting types: ESTJ, ISTJ.

## Related occupations

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

- [IT Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/it-manager) — median $175,140
- [Computer Systems Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/computer-systems-analyst) — median $105,850
- [Project Management Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/project-management-specialist) — median $102,320
- [Software Developer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/software-developer) — median $135,980
- [Computer Systems Engineers/Architect](https://nuecareer.com/careers/computer-systems-engineers-architect) — median $116,580
- [Management Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/management-analyst) — median $101,860
- [Information Technology Project Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/information-technology-project-manager) — median $116,580
- [Database Architect](https://nuecareer.com/careers/database-architect) — median $139,500
- [Computer Network Architect](https://nuecareer.com/careers/computer-network-architect) — median $134,050
- [Information Security Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/information-security-engineer) — median $116,580

## 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/vice-president-of-engineering