What specialization in electrical engineering will make the most money?
The one that lands you in the CEO office.
Seriously, though, why does this matter? Do what you love.
soooooooo…can your answer the question or not?
Right now, I’d say people developing expertise in position, navigation and timing. People who have skills in this area are highly sought after by companies building self-driving cars. There is no amount of money they won’t spend to be the leader.
It isn’t the field of specialization in EE or any other area of engineering that makes the biggest difference in how much money you make. It is how well you perform in your job that does.
Unless you get into a hot startup where you get equity whose value can totally dominate your salary like I did, or get expertise in an area with a huge shortage of talent where companies pay what they have to pay to get their needs met. I’ve heard of signing bonuses >$200K for PhDs with position, timing and navigation expertise.
I have known several people who did enter just the right field at the right time to cash in like ClassicRockerDad describes. However, they didn’t start out in college knowing which field would be that way. Stories of big starting bonuses bring many more people into the field. Now with more people in that field 3 or 4 years later ( I.e. the time it takes to go thru college) the field no longer must pay the bonuses to get the people.
Yes, what is in most demand four years from now is not fully predictable.
Not subareas of EE, but here are some examples of how the time it takes to complete college can affect employment at graduation:
- Computer science major starting in 1998, graduating in 2002.
- Civil engineering major starting in 2005, graduating in 2009.
- Petroleum engineering major starting in 2012, graduating in 2016.
Trends change, but in general the harder the specialty is perceived to be, and the closer it aligns with the main competitive edge of the employer, the better it will pay. For example, systems engineers are generally paid towards the lower end of the spectrum, and a company that does RF antenna design will pay usually their RF engineers better than a company that only does incidental RF work. You should also consider that smaller specialties may mean fewer job openings and fewer opportunities for promotion (not a bias, just numbers - if there are a thousand systems engineers there is always an opening, if there are 10 RF engineers it may take a while to get a real promotion).
Regardless, doing what you actually like generally gives better results, both in salary and quality of life. It is better to be a happy systems engineer than a miserable RF engineer.
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