Occupation / job
Materials Engineers
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
The $112,860 midpoint is $5,236 a month above the $50,020 typical American job, which puts Materials Engineers near the ceiling of published federal wage data. Everything at this level is gated, and the gate is usually years long.
With 22,770 employed as Materials Engineers, most metros have a working market: several employers, visible turnover, and the ability to change jobs without moving house.
Engineering suits people willing to be responsible for something that has to work in the physical world, where the review process exists because the failure mode is not a bug report.
How long it takes to become one of the 22,770 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.
Who should not do this
$88,080 to $142,720 — 1.6x, or $4,553 a month between the quarters. An unremarkable spread, which means the useful planning number for Materials Engineers is the bottom of it rather than the middle.
The 25th percentile is $88,080, $38,060 above the $50,020 typical American job. When even the floor is this high, the thing to investigate is the entry requirement rather than the pay.
Avoid it if you would find the pace frustrating — the review and approval cycle is deliberately slower than the design work.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 22,770 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.
What the spread tells you
A 1.6x ratio is the most common shape in this data: some room to move, none of it quick. Read $112,860 as where you might be after years in Materials Engineers, and $88,080 as where you would start.
In cash terms the middle half of Materials Engineers runs $88,080 to $142,720 — $54,640 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $112,860.
The 75th percentile is $142,720. Reaching it from the $112,860 midpoint is $29,860 a year; reaching it from the $88,080 that the bottom quarter of Materials Engineers earn is $54,640.
The climb from $112,860 to $142,720 is $29,860; the drop to $88,080 is $24,780. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Materials Engineers and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $42.34 at the bottom quarter, $54.25 at the midpoint, $68.61 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $112,860 figure is what employers pay employees. It is before tax and before deductions, it excludes the self-employed entirely, and it says nothing about anyone who does this work on their own account.
The hourly number on this page is $112,860 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Materials Engineers, so it is arithmetic rather than an effective rate.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else