• Question: How much money do you make a year?

    Asked by 565envf35 to Stephen, Natalie, Mark, Jeni, Ashwanth on 13 Jun 2016. This question was also asked by Neil Down.
    • Photo: Mark Gowan

      Mark Gowan answered on 13 Jun 2016:

      565envf35
      That a good question.
      It can vary across the engineering disciplines and the type of company you work for and where.
      I don’t even tell my children what I earn, but its more than £6,000 per month

    • Photo: Jeni Spragg

      Jeni Spragg answered on 13 Jun 2016:

      Haha – that’s an important one, and not one people talk about very often!

      Chemical engineering is a well-paid job, the average starting salary for a chemical engineer after graduating is around £30,000 per year. Within chemical engineering, there is lots of variation – for example, many well qualified engineers in the oil & gas industry tend to earn in the region of £70,000 per year. Often, the good salary doesn’t usually mean giving up all your free time too, as plenty of engineers find they don’t have to work really long hours.

      Right now, because I am doing my PhD (a sort of research degree) at university, I am not paid as well as engineers who have jobs in industry. However, I have lots of other perks, like the freedom to research how I like (basically getting paid to learn!) and eventually I will graduate with a PhD.

    • Photo: Stephen Richardson

      Stephen Richardson answered on 13 Jun 2016:

      I’m in a similar position to Jeni. Although because my research is linked to a company, I guess I get a bit more than most PhD students.
      In the job I had before, I was earning £32,000 per year – but back then I was paying tax. Now I’m a student I dont pay as much tax so even though my salary is lower, I end up with about the same amount in my bank acount.
      Sorry – thats a bit of a complicated answer!
      There’s a big range of salaries within engineering and it also varies a lot around the country.

    • Photo: Natalie Wride

      Natalie Wride answered on 13 Jun 2016:

      Hi 565envf35!

      That’s a great question. Before I left for my PhD and worked in industry, as a Graduate Civil Engineer I earned between £25,000 and £27,000 roughly. If I’d have stayed this would’ve gone up. Similar to what Jeni said, it’s not uncommon for Civil Engineers to be earning in excess of £50,000 once they’re chartered and classed as a professional engineer. It depends a lot on the job you have (in the case of Civil Engineering if you work on site or in the design office) and also the location.

      Whilst I’m doing my PhD, like Jeni and Stephen, I don’t get paid quite as much as I would do in industry. I’m currently on around £14,500 per year and I get paid extra for teaching people studying their Engineering degrees at the University. It doesn’t sound like much but I’m classed as a student so don’t have to pay all the ‘adulty things’ like tax! I’m also really lucky I get to travel for free with things like travel grants – I’m about to go to study in China for a couple of months for free on a grant. So it’s definitely worth it 🙂

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