A quarterly snapshot of the top-performing engineering jobs, states, and metro areas in the United States.

In this edition of Where the Engineering Jobs Are, we pick apart our June 2014 database snapshot to highlight the hottest disciplines and regions of opportunity for engineers.

(If you’re interested in more recent data, check out the February 2015 Engineering Jobs Report.)

The 5 Hottest Engineering Jobs in America

This month’s data holds few surprises; setting aside Software Engineering, the five hottest engineering disciplines in America are Electrical, Systems, Mechanical, Computer, and Civil.

Software is so dominant in the employment marketplace – with 141, 165 Software engineering jobs in our database – as to warrant a separate report.

Before we move into the top states and metro areas for these disciplines, two quick disclaimers:

The engineering job discipline and regional links throughout this report will take you to updated listings, which will vary somewhat from cited figures. While this may be irksome – algorithmically generating Where The Engineering Jobs Are reports in real time would be more accurate – any variation on the cited figures is good news to someone. Either there are more jobs to be had, or some deserving engineer found their next position. Congratulations!

The Top Metro Area category doesn’t mean the listed jobs are in the named town, or even its parent state; rather, the city or town is the location in its state central to the highest concentration of engineering jobs. For example: there may be 637 computer engineering jobs in Maryland, but Bethesda is centrally-located relative to 1,024 jobs.

That said, let’s take a look at the best states and metro areas for employment within the top five engineering disciplines.

The Top 5 States for Electrical Engineering Jobs

Electrical engineering remains the best-performing discipline on-site, with 3,563 jobs opening up in a single three-day period. The state-by-state breakdown, along with the hottest metro area, is as follows:

State Top Metro Area California 5,196 Fremont 2,664 Texas 1,981 Houston 707 Michigan 1,613 Livonia 1,257 DC 1,334 Washington 1,334 Massachusetts 1,229 Lowell 1,105

The Top 5 States for Systems Engineering Jobs

The Capital region is home to a tremendous concentration of systems engineering jobs; you’ll note that three of the top five regions are within reasonable commuting distance. This is reflected in the metro area totals, as well:

State Top Metro Area DC 4,346 Washington 4,346 Virginia 2,884 Arlington 4,018 California 2,674 Fremont 870 Maryland 2,023 Columbia 1,535 Texas 1,261 Irving 398

The Top 5 States for Mechanical Engineering Jobs

With renewed manufacturing and automotive industry activity in the Western and Midwestern regions, we certainly expected them dominate the mechanical engineering listings. (Fun fact: There are more open mechanical engineering positions in Texas than aerospace jobs in the entire country.)

State Top Metro Area California 2,063 Fremont 647 Texas 1,747 Houston 1,003 Michigan 1,516 Livonia 1,142 Ohio 1,000 Middletown 248 Illinois 898 Cicero 532

Top 5 States for Computer Engineering Jobs

While California’s tech industry gets much of the press, there is a nearly equal concentration of computer engineering jobs in the Capital region. They’re arguably more centrally located, as well, making the Maryland-DC-Virginia corridor very attractive for computer engineers considering relocation.

State Top Metro Area California 2,075 Fremont 1,049 DC 965 Washington 965 Texas 662 Irving 228 Maryland 637 Bethesda 1,024 Virginia 633 Arlington 878

Top 5 States for Civil Engineering Jobs

Civil engineering – once a catch-all term for all forms of non-military engineering – is barely holding on to its place in top five engineering disciplines. If network engineering continues to grow as expected, it may overtake civil infrastructure within the year.

Finally, in case you’re curious, here is a breakdown of our remaining engineering job disciplines in this snapshot:

Software 138,664 Aerospace 1,156 Network 8,194 Safety 1,140 Manufacturing 8,032 Materials 896 Project 7,822 Geotechnical 802 Process 7,369 Packaging 751 Quality 7,195 Petroleum 708 Chemical 6,378 Nuclear 348 Sales 5,878 Metallurgical 278 Industrial 5,381 Marine 254 Electronics 2,542 Agricultural 188 Structural 2,253 Mining 161 Construction 1,849 Environmental 107 Architectural 1,481 Solar 28 Biomedical 1,158

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