Engineering Levels

[Kriegen]

What is the difference between all Engineering levels?
Like Engineer I, Engineer II, Engineer III, Engineer IV?

Someone told me I need to have a paper certification to be considered any of these. So does that mean there are tests to be passed for these qualifications?
Any info you people would have would be great help to me, Thank You

 

[Ron]

Those are generally job classifications and salary levels, based on experience and qualifications. The American Society of Civil Engineers has a good explanation of each of those classifications.

If you have paper "certification" to meet Engineer IV, then obviously you can meet I, II, and III as they are progressive, career path classifications.

 

[GregLocock]

Those levels are more of a guide to seniority and experience. These days you will need a paper certification for almost any engineering job, and you had better accpet that it will need to be backed up by more than paper.

Here's a link to the Australian definitions, as you can see they talk far more about experience and roles than quals.

http://www.apesma.asn.au/online_surveys/eng/EngLevels.asp

Cheers

Greg Locock

SIGlease see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[IRstuff]

They're primarily a way of justifying a particular salary level. While they're in order of increasing salary and experience, there's lots of overlap, both in experience and salary. Obviously, the more senior you become, the more independent and self-starting and self-managing you are supposed to be.

TTFN

FAQ731-376

 

[cksh]

I Agree with what everyone said.

From my xp it has been mostly about salary. Most of the time I do not even know what my classification is. It is only stated in formal memos telling me a got a raise etc.

I have never had one officially listed in my title. My last job was as a design engineer III. Didn't know about the III until I got a raise the following year and saw it in the memo.

Now I am a senior engineer. Not sure if it is a I , II, or III. From my salary and level of xp in the field I am sure it is a I.

Funny, at my current job I did see an official memo from HR, and they not only did not have I II or III, but a totally different title altogether

I am whatever they want me to be as long as they keep paying me!

 

[Ron]

cksh...your title of "Senior Engineer" would not be compatible with a Classification of "I" in any of the classes I know about. It is more likely to be at least a II or III.

The classifications don't mean much except in public jobs or in large companies. I have typically been in positions where there were titles, as opposed to classifications, although somewhat related (Staff Engineer, Project Engineer, Senior Engineer, Principal Engineer, Chief Engineer, Senior Principal Engineer, etc.).

If there were parity in titles, they might mean something, but from my experience, companies throw around titles on a whim, without much structure. In a very large company that I was with for many years, the titles were guarded by company policy and they had to be earned. In another, smaller company, their initial approach was to designate people just by what everyone thought they should be called...I was able to convince them that a title structure should be instituted that gave some incentive and some stature to the titles.

 

[ctopher]

These titles can vary among companies, countries, and disciplines.

Chris
SolidWorks/PDMWorks 08 3.1
AutoCAD 08; CATIA V5
ctopher's home (updated Aug 5, 2008)
ctopher's blog
SolidWorks Legion

 

[SomptingGuy]

I've never seen two companies with the same definitions for bands/grades/etc. The idea of I, II, III is new to me. Our American division doesn't use this nomenclature. Oddly, it still uses the grading we imposed on it years ago (1-6), even though we no longer use it in the UK.

- Steve

 

[KENAT]

Like ctopher, these things vary with time & space. There are various organizations that attempt to standardize these rankings but any company can use the same title to mean something else.

I'm apprarantly something like CAD Engineer IV. However when you compare the official description to what I do, there's almost no similarity.

Important thing is I get paid like a 'CAD Engineer IV';-).

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at posting policies:

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484

 

[looslib]

You alos have companies who do the scale increasing from a I to a II to III, etc. Other companies may do the increase in the reverse order!
I have also seen Fellow Engineer and Sr. Fellow Engineer in some companies. These have usually been someone who came up with an ingenious patentable product or method to save the company big$ in manufacturing costs.

"Wildfires are dangerous, hard to control, and economically catastrophic."

Ben Loosli

 

[aardvarkdw]

Would you believe that the company I work for uses two different systems (position grade and retention level), one grades in ascending order (I,II,III, etc...)higher being better and the other grades in descending order (III,II,I, etc...) Lower being better... You have to love bureaucracy...

David

 

[swertel]

I worked at a "small" aerospace company with a two-level system like that. And what was worse was that the retention level wasn't based on anything but seniority. It also followed a standard bell-curve so after a layoff, you may have been an R2, but you'd be reclassified as an R3 to be let go the next go-around just to keep the base percentage of R1, R2, and R3 within a work group.

--Scott

http://wertel.eng.pro