Firm management made easy
Structural engineers average $112,248 a year in Salary.com’s October 2026 benchmark, with 25th-to-75th percentile pay of $103,529 to $121,267. Pay climbs from $74,157 at Level I (0–2 years) to $110,164 at Level III (4–7 years) and $123,956 at Level IV (7+ years). Rebuild bands from the state, license, and sector benchmarks below, each sourced and dated.
What Structural Engineers Earn
Civil engineers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) occupation that includes structural engineers, earn a median of $100,840 a year, or $48.48 an hour, in the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) data for May 2025. The May 2025 wage profile puts the civil engineer mean at $108,670, or $52.24 an hour. The bottom 10% of civil engineers earned under $68,240, and the top 10% earned over $163,220. The occupation’s 25th and 75th percentile wages fall at $79,930 and $129,680.
Structural-only sources run higher than BLS, from Salary.com’s $112,248 average to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) 2026 salary report, which found a $130,000 median for members in structural engineering, the lowest of its lines of business. Its sample skews senior. The typical respondent in the 2025 report summary had 20 years of experience.
Structural engineers’ pay varies with experience, a Professional Engineer (PE) or Structural Engineer (SE) license, location, and employer sector. Use these core sources when you rebuild bands.
Why Accurate Pay Benchmarks Matter for Hiring Decisions
BLS projects 6% employment growth for civil engineers, which include structural engineers, from 2025 to 2035, against 3% for all occupations, with 22,700 openings a year. Firms compete for that growing pool of open roles, which is why current pay data matters in every offer.
The American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) Q3 2026 sentiment survey found that 88% of firms had at least one opening, and the median firm had five. Seven percent of positions sat unfilled on average. Zweig Group’s 2026 benchmarks found that 42% of firms have no formal compensation program establishing pay ranges.
Offering above a stale band to win a candidate creates compression. ACEC’s Engineering Inc. gives an illustrative compression case in which a new Structural Engineer III comes in at $110,000 against a $105,000 midpoint. Rebuild bands each year from the latest release rather than adjusting old ones.
Structural Engineer Pay Rises With Experience and Seniority
Most of the climb comes early in Salary.com’s ladder. Level I averages $74,157 at 0–2 years, Level III $110,164 at 4–7 years, and Level IV $123,956 at 7+ years. Of the calculated $49,799 gain from Level I to Level IV, $36,007 arrives in the first seven years. Level IV adds the remaining $13,792.
Entry-level to senior pay progression
Salary.com’s level ladder and Level IV benchmark set the experience bands, and its structural engineer salaries page supplies the principal figure:
Above Level IV, Zweig Group’s 2026 salary report tracks project managers, department heads, and principals as separate levels, but it doesn’t publish the dollar figures. Salary.com’s principal figure has no experience band and sits well below ASCE’s $152,000 average base salary for all civil engineers. Use it as a low reference point for principal offers. At the entry end, ASCE reports civil entry-level salaries above $77,000 in 2026.
Base pay versus bonuses and total compensation
PSMJ Resources’ 2024 compensation tables for civil engineers with 10–14 years of experience show a median salary of $106,087 and a median bonus of $6,625, with 94% receiving one. Bonuses add 6% to base pay at that level. Median total direct compensation came to $113,765. The other pieces of a package:
- Retirement: The same PSMJ tables show a median employer retirement contribution of $3,906, or 4% of salary. Zweig reports that 85% of firms make fixed or matching contributions, with a median match of 75% of employee contributions and a maximum match of 5% of salary.
- Profit sharing: Payscale’s self-reported profiles show structural engineer profit sharing of $1,000 to $12,000 a year.
- Exam stipends: Zweig’s 2026 workforce benchmarks found that 93% of firms pay professional exam application or registration fees. The National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES) lists PE Structural exam fees of $350 for each of the four sections, or $1,400 in total.
- Overtime: Under the Fair Labor Standards Act’s federal overtime rules, firms don’t have to pay exempt staff overtime, and non-exempt staff get time and a half for hours over 40 in a week.
A PE or SE License Raises Structural Engineer Pay
A PE license adds nearly $49,000 in median income, the PE income premium in ASCE’s 2026 report, which compares PE holders with respondents who hold no license or certification. The premium covers all civil disciplines, not structural engineers alone.
No current public survey publishes Engineer-in-Training (EIT) or SE medians, so price the SE by the work it lets an engineer sign rather than by a published premium.
The license matters more where it is mandatory. The National Council of Structural Engineers Associations (NCSEA) licensure guide lists Hawaii and Illinois as full practice states, where the SE is required for any structural work. It lists Alaska, California, Georgia, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington as partial practice states, where the SE is required for significant structures. Firms also require the PE outside those states. ACEC’s Q3 2026 survey found 96% of firms had positions requiring one, while the median firm had only 45% of its engineers licensed. Zweig’s 2026 exam reward figures show 55% of firms give a raise or cash bonus for passing a first professional exam.
Highest-Paying States and Cities for Structural Engineers
The District of Columbia (DC) pays structural engineers the most, at a $124,281 average in Salary.com’s October 1, 2026 data, followed by California and Massachusetts. BLS state estimates cover all civil engineers, so use them only as a cross-check for your state.
These are the 18 jurisdictions above the $112,248 national average in Salary.com’s structural state averages:
Ranks 11 to 18 are Maryland at $115,739, Minnesota at $114,863, Colorado at $114,527, Illinois at $114,414, Oregon at $113,988, Delaware at $113,674, New Hampshire at $113,476, and Virginia at $113,034.
California, Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii all require an SE for at least some structures, and all four rank in the top nine. The overlap is a correlation. The data doesn’t show the license drives state pay. Tennessee averages $104,896 on the same source, and Georgia averages $108,263, so both fall below the national figure and stay off the table.
San Jose leads Salary.com’s city list at $141,578, followed by San Francisco at $140,028. Oakland ranks third at $137,077. Atlanta appears on the same list at $109,913, slightly below the national average.
Structural Versus Civil Engineer Pay Compared
Structural engineers sit inside the BLS civil engineer occupation, so federal data gives both groups one median and one projection, and job-posting and survey data have to separate them. The $100,840 median and the 6% growth figure for 2025–2035 cover both. For the broader category BLS uses, the civil engineer salary guide covers pay across all civil disciplines.
Payscale’s self-reported salary profiles give structural engineers a slight edge, with a structural engineer average of $84,069 against a civil engineer average of $80,822, 4% more. ASCE’s member survey points the other way, with structural engineering at the bottom of its lines of business. The two sources sample different people. Payscale counts self-reported base pay, while ASCE counts senior members across all civil lines, including forensic and construction work that pays more.
Pay Varies by Industry Sector and Job Title
BLS industry wage medians for May 2025 show that government employers pay civil and structural engineers more than consulting firms:
- Federal government: $117,790, from the May 2025 OEWS federal median
- Local government: $113,640
- State government: $102,440
- Engineering services: $100,620, the sector that employs 51% of these engineers
- Nonresidential building construction: $82,400
The top-end sectors fall outside that list. ASCE’s 2026 sector medians put private-industry defense roles at nearly $169,000 and the forensic line at nearly $184,000. Its 2025 report gave aerospace disciplines a $195,977 discipline median. For offshore work, Rigzone lists offshore structural base pay of $95,000 at 0–3 years, $135,000 at 4–9 years, and $185,000 at 10 or more, before performance bonuses that often add 10–25%.
Three related job titles have their own pay data, though each source measures pay differently:
- Bridge Design Engineer: Indeed’s bridge engineer average is $111,918, from 2,300 salaries in job postings.
- Senior Structural Analysis Engineer: Payscale’s structural analysis base averages $78,869 in base pay across all experience levels, while Glassdoor’s senior structural data shows a $178,537 self-reported average for senior staff. The two aren’t directly comparable.
- Project Engineer: The one structural figure is Glassdoor’s single-firm median of $108,000 for Project Structural Engineers at DCI Engineers, from 55 salaries.
Hourly, Weekly, and Monthly Pay Conversions
A structural engineer earns $48.48 an hour, $1,939 a week and $8,403 a month at the BLS civil engineer median. Hourly rates come from the May 2025 BLS annual figures, and the weekly and monthly figures are calculated by dividing annual pay by 52 and 12.
Utilization and Staffing Cost Drive What Firms Can Pay
The salary you can afford depends on how much of that salary lands on billable work and what multiplier your firm earns on it. Deltek’s 47th Clarity study of 896 A&E firms reported 58.9% utilization, measured in dollars, and a 3.11 net labor multiplier. Zweig reports median chargeability of nearly 62%. Zweig doesn’t state whether its figure is dollar- or hour-based, so don’t treat it as equal to Deltek’s dollar measure.
Your Structural Engineer III offer is $110,164. At Deltek’s median multiplier, that salary returns:
Your multiplier and overhead will differ from Deltek’s medians, and the example leaves out benefits. Still, the calculated $30,500 swing on one engineer shows why utilization rates and billing rates belong in the same conversation as salary bands.
Monograph is firm management software built for A&E firms, used by 16,000+ architects and engineers across 2,000+ firms. Its target is firms of 5 to 100 people. Monograph is sold as a subscription. See current pricing plans.
You set budgets by phase, assign planned hours by person, and staff log time against those phases, so you can see whether a role’s hours support its rate before the phase closes.
- Timeline and phase budget: MoneyGantt™ is Monograph’s signature view. It shows the project schedule as a Gantt-style timeline and lays budget-to-cash progress over it, so you can see when a phase is burning fee faster than its schedule.
- Hiring capacity: Capacity forecasting compares each employee’s compensation hours against lead hours weighted by each lead’s win probability, so you can see the staffing gap before you post the role.
Workbench reports staffing eight times faster with Monograph.
Net revenue per employee is the pool every salary band draws from. Monograph’s 2026 benchmarks report, built on anonymized data across 660 A&E firms, found that firms adopting artificial intelligence (AI) earn $210,000 in net revenue per employee, compared with $190,000 for non-adopters, a $20,000 gap. The benchmark is a market-level pattern and doesn’t show that any one tool caused the gap.
Whether a Structural Engineer Can Earn $200,000 or More
Yes, but only on a few paths. $200,000 sits above the BLS 90th percentile of $163,220, so it takes a senior or principal role, a high-paying sector, or offshore work. No source reports what share of structural engineers earn that much. Consider these paths:
- Senior and principal roles: In Glassdoor’s senior salary data for Senior Structural Engineers, top earners (90th percentile) reach $272,730, self-reported. Zweig’s leadership findings show nearly 70% of firms paid leaders bonuses and more than 60% issued shareholder distributions.
- Sector: ASCE’s 2026 report puts forensic at nearly $184,000 and construction at $180,000. Its 2025 report put aerospace at $195,977.
- Offshore: A 10% bonus on Rigzone’s $185,000 senior base comes to $203,500.
A senior or principal role is the path that fits a small or mid-sized firm, where leader bonuses and shareholder distributions build on base pay.
Reconcile Your Salary Bands Against Live Firm Data
Start your next band review from your own utilization and multiplier by role, set each band against the level and state figures above, and confirm its top still clears your multiplier at realistic utilization. Testing a band against your multiplier works only when phase budgets, staffing, timesheets, and billing sit in one connected system instead of four spreadsheets. Book a demo to test that connected workflow against your firm’s project structure.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does it take to become a structural engineer?
Count on four years of work in most states after a bachelor’s degree from an ABET-accredited program before you’re eligible for the PE. Most candidates take the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam in their final year of school or soon after. Salary.com’s Level III band of 4–7 years matches the point when engineers become PE-eligible.
A master’s degree in engineering that the board accepts cuts that requirement to three years under the NCEES Model Law. NCSEA’s licensure guide also notes that Alaska, California, Oregon, and Washington require more experience after the PE before you can earn the SE. Plan any timeline for a PE-track engineer around those minimums, and allow longer where the SE is in play.
Do structural engineers get paid more than civil engineers?
Slightly, in some data. Payscale’s self-reported base pay puts structural engineers about 4% ahead of civil engineers, while ASCE’s senior-skewed member survey ranks structural engineering lowest of its lines of business, so neither source settles the question.
BLS counts both groups in one occupation, so its $100,840 median covers structural and civil engineers together.
How much does a PE or SE license raise pay?
A PE adds nearly $49,000 in median income across all civil disciplines in ASCE’s 2026 report, compared with respondents who hold no license or certification. No current survey publishes an SE premium. NCSEA lists Hawaii and Illinois as full practice states, where the SE is required for any structural work, so the license matters more there.
In ACEC’s Q3 2026 survey, 91% of firms said they encourage unlicensed engineers to work toward a PE.
What is the split between base pay and bonuses?
Bonuses add a median 6% to base pay for civil engineers with 10–14 years of experience in PSMJ’s 2024 data. Glassdoor’s self-reported structural data shows a wider spread, with base pay of $92,000 to $139,000 plus $18,000 to $33,000 in additional pay. Use the PSMJ median as your anchor and treat the Glassdoor range as self-reported.
