What are the hottest states, disciplines, and metro areas for engineering jobs this quarter?

In this quarter’s Where the Engineering Jobs Are, we used the October 2014 snapshot of open job listings to determine the ten disciplines and states with the highest demand. For each of those top engineering disciplines, we also highlighted the metropolitan area with the highest number of available jobs.

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

Some notes, before we begin:

This quarter’s report is based on a sample size of 307,928 engineering jobs in the United States.

in the United States. Technician and other non-engineering roles were excluded.

Discipline rankings exclude software engineering , which will be the subject of a separate report.

, which will be the subject of a separate report. Churn is constant. Snapshot numbers may not reflect real time, onsite totals in each category; each snapshot total will be formatted to link to its real time value, if you’re interested in further research.

For completeness sake, I’ll append full tables with the snapshot totals by discipline and state at the end of each section. Each cell will link to a current listing of available positions in its related category.

Top 10 Engineering Jobs in America

Excluding software, electrical engineering continues to offer the most opportunities for American engineers, followed closely by Systems and Mechanical engineering.

These three disciplines tend to dominate engineering jobs reports due to the incredible range of possible applications for their skill set. What matters far more in turn of job search outcomes is domain-specific experience and qualifications — if there is sufficient interest for more granular analysis within each discipline, we’d be happy to break those factors out for public review.

Best Metro Areas Per Top 10 Discipline

This table targets the best-performing metropolitan area for each of the top ten engineering disciplines. Note that these jobs aren’t necessarily located within the political boundaries of the named location, as with states, but within a twenty-five mile radius.

Total Engineering Jobs by Discipline: October 2014 Snapshot

Here are the discipline-specific snapshot totals, for reference. The name of each discipline is linked to its corresponding category page on EngineerJobs, where you can find real time figures.

Software 138,409 Manufacturing 7,886 Structural 2,243 Packaging 745 Electrical 27,915 Quality 7,443 Construction 1,858 Petroleum 706 Systems 23,748 Process 7,158 Aerospace 1,565 Metallurgical 340 Mechanical 19,410 Chemical 6,462 Architectural 1,447 Nuclear 312 Computer 12,538 Industrial 5,985 Biomedical 1,340 Marine 298 Civil 9,742 Sales 5,689 Safety 1,098 Agricultural 219 Network 8,024 Environmental 2,683 Materials 1,085 Mining 196 Project 8,015 Electronics 2,513 Geotechnical 840 Solar 16

Top 10 States for Engineering Jobs

Moving back to the macro-level, we also looked at the ten best-performing states in terms of open job listings. Together, they represent 59.4% of all available engineering jobs:

Please note that these totals include software engineering and may not be evident of trends within the broader engineering economy. (Though it’s worth noting that, in terms of software engineering, California has more press than available positions. The most target-rich place to base yourself while hunting for software engineering jobs isn’t Silicon Valley — it’s Newark, NJ.)

Again, for easier access to real time totals, here’s a table with the top ten states’ values:

If you’d like more detailed data from the October 2014 snapshot, feel free to either comment here or reach out over Twitter. We’re always happy to help and open to constructive feedback.