2021 Annual Salary, Salary Range, and Highest Paying States and Industries

Table of contents
  1. Average salary
  2. Starting salary
  3. Salary rank
  4. Salary range
  5. Highest paying states
  6. Highest paying industries

Average salary

Starting salary

Entry-level annual salary

Entry-level Automotive Engineers with little to no experience can expect to make anywhere between $58,410 to $71,880 per year or $28 to $35 per hour. Similar to any other job, their salary will increase as they gain experience.

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Salary rank

We wanted to make it easy for our readers to compare the salary of Automotive Engineers to all the other careers out there. So we created Salary Rank. We compared the salary of all careers then we gave them a rank of A, B, C, or D depending on where their average salary sit in comparison to other careers.

Salary range

Level Hourly Annual
Highest (Top 10%) $68 $141,060
Senior (Top 25%) $55 $114,380
Middle (Mid 50%) $43 $90,160
Junior (Bottom 25%) $35 $71,880
No experience (Bottom 10%) $28 $58,410

Highest paying states

State Hourly Annual
NM $56 $117,180
DC $56 $115,860
MD $54 $112,090
CA $53 $110,070
LA $51 $106,090
DE $51 $106,040
MA $51 $105,250
CO $50 $104,120
TX $49 $102,660
AK $49 $102,090

Another simple way to increase your salary as an Automotive Engineer is to move to a higher paying state. However moving to a higher paying state like NM doesn't guarantee that you will make more because the expenses at NM might be much higher than where you are currently living at right now.

According to BLS, the highest paid Automotive Engineers are in the states of NM, DC, MD, CA and LA.

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