Engineering Employment Strong Despite Tech Layoffs

Engineering recruitment remains strong despite a lot of recent tech layoff news. Although many technology giants have announced major layoffs, including Microsoft laying off 10,000 of its employees and Amazon cutting 18,000 or 6% of its workers, our entire recruitment team continues to be inundated with engineer staffing requests!

Moreover, the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) revealed that last month’s unemployment rate fell .2% to 3.5%. However, anecdotally, we believe that the real unemployment rate for engineering talent continues to be near zero. This is creating a major engineer staffing problem for most of our clients.

Client Case Study Confirms Engineering Staffing Shortages

During a recent talk with the CEO of one of our good clients located in St. Charles, Illinois, who we are currently recruiting a Senior Mechanical Engineer, he shared that he has a lot more engineer openings than good engineers to fill them! He went on to say that if he could fill all his positions, he could double his revenues!

Engineering Salaries Spiraling To Attract More Engineers

Additional evidence comes from the Levels.fyi recent salary survey that confirms principal engineers are getting up to $1 million! Furthermore, some entry-level engineers can earn more than $250,000 at some of the highest paying tech firms.

Based on more than 150,000 salary submissions, their research indicates that entry-level engineers with up to only two years of experience can command a salary of up to $274,000 from New York's Two Sigma, which specializes in applying data science to the financial services industry. Additionally, Stripe, an online payment specialist, is offering around $266,000, and Cruise, a self-driving car company is offering $238,000. All for junior engineers with 0-2 years’ experience!

On the standard engineering grade of 3-5 years’ experience, Databricks, an Enterprise software company, is offering the highest salaries at around $443,000. Cruise and online gaming platform Roblox came in second and third, respectively with $361,000 and $354,000. 

At the top end of the scale, a principal engineer, with 5-10 years or more experience, can earn $1,044,000 with social media giant Facebook. In this tier of engineers, Stripe came in second with $900,000, while Airbnb was third with $796,000.

Our 12 Tips to Improve Your Engineering Recruiting 

We at Strategic Search Corporation we developed 12 short instructional videos to guide our clients through these tough engineering recruitment times. Each offers a different employment nugget. However, together they combine to form a mosaic that can energize your engineer hiring process.

Strategic Search Can Improve Your Engineering Recruiting 

To learn more about how Strategic Search Corporation can assist you with your engineering recruitment efforts during these tough times of securing an engineer, click here for our full contact information. Or call us today at (312) 944-4000. Then we can discuss creative ways to improve your staffing process and results.