Where are the EE jobs in the US, apart from Silicon Valley? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: anonymous_ee
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: October 24, 2023, 02:14:35 am
content: TL;DR:Browsing LinkedIn gives me some idea of what goes on in different places, but nothing beats asking a local. So... how is the job market where you live? How big, what niches, is it competitive, is the pay good? I would appreciate all insights, but specially Boston, Philadelphia, Birmingham AL, and Silicon Valley itself for reference.Hi everyone,I'm thinking about the next years in my career and wanted to get your opinions and perceptions on where are the EE jobs in the US.For some background, I want to do electronics design engineering. I am looking for an entry level position in that specialty. I've had electronics as a hobby since I was 13. At some point I watched EEVblog for hours every day after school. I have 2 years of manufacturing and test engineering experience, and 3 years of unrelated network engineering experience before that. Right now I'm in grad school for a masters in EE.I would consider myself competent technically, and a great troubleshooter. I think I convey this very well in interviews, but my resume/experience is very fragmented so recruiters don't know what to do with me (if I get to the interview, I get hired about 30% of the time). The social aspect of the manufacturing environment wears me down a LOT. No problems in network engineering though, office environment with occasional field work with colleagues and no customers. I also worked as a lab technician for some months and it was great. So I do best at a job where I see a few familiar faces, and can spend my energy on the engineering.Last year I moved to New York City for family reasons. I was expecting a wider variety of electronics engineering jobs, but this doesn't seem to be the case for the city. Most job offerings seem to be either for manufacturing in New Jersey, manufacturing in Long Island, or related to defense contractors (judging by the secret clearance requirements).Realistically, I could only work in Long Island but the salaries are not that good. In the city proper, there is a small amount of jobs in tech that pay well, but they are few and far in between, specially entry level. Colleagues in tech have been laid off and haven’t found work in months, except for a handful that got hired by a startup (those were senior positions and they are senior-level engineers). All in all, things seem slow in NYC tech.So for my wife and I's next move, I want to get a feel for the jobs in other areas before moving cities. I think we need to consider job markets for the both of us for the next place we move to.Thank you and all the best to youPS, moderation team: I'm posting in General because it's is neither looking for work nor offering work, I hope this is an acceptable choice.

author: anonymous_ee
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: October 24, 2023, 03:03:47 am
content: On both manufacturing and test engineering I worked on an inductive proximity sensors assembly line for a Fortune 500 company. Manufacturing focused on reducing product defects and yield loss through process improvements. Test engineering focused on the same things but through changes to the automated test equipment. It was semi-automatic equipment where the operator places the device under test and the machine performs the test. Those machines consisted of PLCs, DAQs, assorted sensors, a C# test framework and NI TestStand for test sequencing. I did not do clean sheet designs (that’s a different department) but I did lead construction of duplicates and designed updates and upgrades for existing machines.The reason I ask is because in two years we will have to move no matter what, so we might as well explore our options.

author: anonymous_ee
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: October 24, 2023, 03:16:20 am
content: Quote from: karpouzi9 on October 24, 2023, 02:36:35 amI don't have the appetite for risk that a startup takes, unfortunately (specially someone else's money). I have done some contracting, but finding contracts is just as hard as finding jobs if there's no industry around you.I guess I can sell niche hardware I design, and I've been designing some things for my own experience. But if I want to fund that, I need a full time job after I'm done studying.QuoteI haven't done electronics design professionally, unless you count the test engineering experience. At the hobby level I have done projects involving embedded systems, programming in C, PCB layouts, programming drivers in Python for a robot, and some Verilog. Embedded electronics is the most interesting to me. But I really don't like cornering myself into a niche (but this is what they want out of a professional, unfortunately).

author: jwet
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2023, 05:20:29 am
content: I was an FAE for Maxim for a lot of years and visited all our customer worldwide over the years. In the US, its pretty well spread out but certain industries tend to be regionalized- obviously around Detroit and a lot of the midwest is Automotive. The midwest also has a lot of industrial- Cleveland, OH, Chicago, IL, Indianapolis, IN. Indianapolis also has a lot of medical. LA, Orange County and Southern CA including San Diego is a huge EE Area likely about the same size of the bay area. Silicon Valley has the chip companies and there are lots of related jobs for applications, IC design, IC Test and yield enhancement, product engineering, etc. Dallas Texas is a traditional Telecom hub. Austin has a quite a bit of everything, computers, industrial and test, El Paso does gritty automotive and industrial. Phoenix is ok and is Tuscon. Boston has a lot of everything as does NY, especially Long Island, NJ and PA aren't bad. Maryland especially close to DC/VA is a hot spot. North Carolina in the Raleigh/RTP area is a hot spot where I live- networking, computers and some wireless. Southwestern VA- Lynchburg, VA is good. Knoxville, TN has a fair amount of activity. Atlanta and most of FLA is good. Oklahoma is a hot spot, especially marine electronics. Kansas has Aero and GPS (Garmin). Washingon and Oregon are more than fair. Washington has most in the west near Seattle. Oregon has a ton of FABs and IC companies as well as smallish cos. Colorado especially Denver and Boulder are hot. New Mexico is ok.Places without much activity in general South Carolina, West VA, Arkansas,the Dakotas, Idaho, Montana.A lot of these areas grew out of some concentrated industry giant traditionally. People are attracted to these big employers and often create spinoffs in the same area. Good schools often drive tech concentration- this is certainly true in the Bay Area but also Boston, Phili and Atlanta, etc.

author: jonpaul
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2023, 06:36:52 am
content: Hello anonymous_ee: If I understand you, the mentioned 30%rate of hire/application is VERY GOOD and VERY HIGH!Most job seekers are lucky to get ONE response out og 100 or even 1000!Are your methods first to locate a city or region to move to based on possibility of finding a nexus of EE work?Decades ago, would have been LA, NY area, Boston, SF Bay.Nowadays the dispersion of engineers, remote work, outsourcing changed this. Many large firms outsourced ALL engineering, to China, East Europe, and do it all remotely. Firing engineering staff is more common than hiring.A relocation must be guided by other factors as most large cities now have a very cost of living, little good housing, very high taxes, high crime risk, risky transport,Normally job seekers will either specify a locale (will not relocate) or be open to relocate anywhere, depending on the offer (relocation expense paid)My career and work as EE for 55 years was by connections, friends, luck.Finally a employment agency specialized in engineering may be much better than anything like LinkedIn or other such.Just my thoughts,Bon ChanceJon

author: JPortici
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2023, 07:10:14 am
content: Arizona? where microchip is at (see their career pages) I don't know of any other places because i'm not a citizenAnyway US is pretty big, i'm sure there are plenty of jobs, even in places you don't think about (and the same applies for every country)Quote from: jonpaul on October 24, 2023, 06:36:52 amIME it's the other way aroundnot even getting candidates for a programmer's job (and everyone i know is in the same boat)

author: jwet
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2023, 03:54:28 pm
content: Arizona- yesMicrochip grew out of General Instruments which has a tortured path back to Motorola. Phoenix is a good place for a fab. There are several in the Phoenix/Chandler Area. Motorola is huge there, some of their semis stuff but a lot of mil/aero, toll tags, computers. Freescale the semiconductor piece of Moto that spunoff is still there. There is also a lot of Honeywell where they design commercial flight control computers, etc. For some reasons, there are several credit card terminal guys there- Hypercom among others. Tuscon was once home to Hughes Missiles and Space and Burr Brown (now consolidated into Analog Devices), this created a lot of related industry down there. Arizona is a nice f6iarly low cost place to live if you can find a shady spot in the summer.

author: coppice
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2023, 04:02:18 pm
content: Quote from: JPortici on October 24, 2023, 07:10:14 amYou don't get applicants or the company doesn't? I hear more and more people in engineering finding their HR dept has rejected every good candidate that applied, before you even knew they existed.

author: PwrElectronics
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 24, 2023, 10:38:14 pm
content: At my company we were doing a lot of hiring the past couple of years. Not sure right now as I am not in management.But, the area is upper "west" midwest, in the Iowa/Minnesota general area. Calling something the Midwest of the US and including Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan is always bothered me since I am from Minnesota originally and think of those states as "out east", haha.It has always been difficult hiring due to unless one is from that general area, there is a lack of interest in moving there due to long/cold/snowy winters, etc.There are roles in power electronics for electric vehicle applications in many larger companies in the Midwest if one is not concerned about long winters.

author: jwet
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2023, 02:55:25 pm
content: I didn't mention regions within what I call the midwest- you're right it is imprecise. Iowa has a fair amount of electronics, it tends to be industrial and automotive. Iowa has a number of white goods companies (Large Home Appliances) and has a lot of RF and Aero that spun out of Collins Radio. (Cedar Rapids). Wisconsin is another industrial and telecom hot spot. Johnson Controls is and early company there that make a lot of HVAC and other industrial controls and automotive. Motorola has some presence in Wi. Minnesota has a bit of industrial electronics and has become a bit of startup area. I judge how much activity a place had by the number of times that I recall travelling there- this usually meant that there was some big companies and enough of them to fill up a day to make my travel worthwhile. This was easy in most of the Southwest but more difficult in the midwest and upper midwest.

author: rstofer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2023, 04:04:20 pm
content: Play around at bls.gov. Search for 'electronics' and chase it down a rabbit hole. You can get regional data including average salary, jobs in the field, job growth and so on. It is a truly useful site but it takes a bit of time to discover all that is available.

author: Conrad Hoffman
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 25, 2023, 06:21:16 pm
content: There's a surprising amount of tech in Upstate New York, Rochester, Buffalo and Syracuse area. Cost of living is low. Few or no volcanos, earth quakes, wild fires or mud slides. Most areas don't flood. Climate isn't extreme unless you choose your location unwisely. Research micro-climates. Housing is reasonable. Clean water is plentiful. Given the above, salaries aren't crazy high, but good enough. The area just received a federal "tech hub" designation, so hopefully more money will be coming in for semiconductor and similar projects.