How much do IoT engineers earn?
What IoT engineers earn according to official U.S. and UK statistics, why IoT engineer is not an official occupation and how to read pay data and job signals.
Photo: ThisisEngineering / Unsplash
After reading this article you will be able to:
- Explain why official statistics count IoT engineers under broader occupations
- Read U.S. BLS and UK ASHE pay figures for the occupations closest to IoT work
- Weigh pay data against location, industry and the skills employers ask for
Drafted with AI from primary sources · checked by a separate AI agent · spot-checked by our editors · How we check
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No statistics office publishes a salary for “IoT engineer”, because it is not an official occupation. The people who build connected products are counted as electrical engineers, electronics engineers, computer hardware engineers or software developers, and the official pay figures for those occupations are the most reliable guide available. In the U.S., the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the May 2025 median annual wage at $120,630 for electrical engineers, $130,220 for electronics engineers, $135,980 for software developers and $161,740 for computer hardware engineers. In the UK, the 2025 Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings puts the median full-time pay of electrical engineers at about £61,000 a year.
This guide sets out those figures with their sources, explains what they do and do not measure, and looks at what the job market signals say. Salary surveys from recruiters and job sites are left out on purpose: their samples and methods are rarely published.
Why is there no official IoT engineer salary?
Statistics offices classify jobs with standard occupation codes, such as the Standard Occupational Classification in the U.S. and SOC 2020 in the UK. These describe the type of work (designing electronic circuits, writing software) rather than the product it goes into, and none of them has a code for IoT. A firmware developer at a smart-lock company and one at a car supplier are counted in the same occupation.
That means any “IoT engineer salary” figure you see online was built by someone choosing which job ads or survey answers to include. The official figures below are broader, but they come from large employer surveys with published methods.
What do U.S. statistics say?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics produces Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) every year from a survey of employers. The latest release covers May 2025. The table uses the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook pages for electrical and electronics engineers, computer hardware engineers and software developers, which draw on OEWS.
| Occupation (SOC code) | Median | Lowest 10% earned less than | Highest 10% earned more than |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electrical engineers (17-2071) | $120,630 | $76,550 | $184,300 |
| Electronics engineers, except computer (17-2072) | $130,220 | $81,840 | $206,960 |
| Computer hardware engineers (17-2061) | $161,740 | $92,940 | $225,330 |
| Software developers (15-1252) | $135,980 | $82,460 | $214,670 |
Industry makes a large difference within the same occupation. According to the same BLS pages, the median for electronics engineers was $146,700 in semiconductor and electronic component manufacturing and $109,040 in telecommunications. For electrical engineers it ranged from $141,160 in aerospace parts manufacturing to $105,780 in engineering services.
The BLS also projects employment growth from 2025 to 2035 of 8% for electrical and electronics engineers, 9% for computer hardware engineers and 10% for software developers, quality assurance analysts and testers combined, all faster than the 3% average for all occupations.
What do UK statistics say?
The Office for National Statistics publishes the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (ASHE), a yearly survey of employee jobs. Table 14 breaks pay down by four-digit SOC 2020 code. The figures below are gross annual pay for full-time employee jobs in the 2025 revised release.
| Occupation (SOC 2020) | Median | Mean |
|---|---|---|
| Electrical engineers (2123) | £61,024 | £63,595 |
| Electronics engineers (2124) | £52,751 | £59,862 |
| Programmers and software development professionals (2134) | £56,770 | £65,868 |
| All full-time employee jobs | £39,157 | £48,930 |
The electronics engineers figure rests on fewer jobs and is less precise than the other two; ONS suppresses several of its percentiles. Provisional 2026 figures are also out, and will be revised next year.
What about Italy and the rest of the EU?
We have not quoted figures for Italy or the EU. Eurostat’s comparable source, the Structure of Earnings Survey, runs only every four years, and we did not find an official annual table that isolates these occupations cleanly. Rather than mix sources with different definitions, we leave the gap visible. If you work in Italy, the national collective agreement (CCNL) for your employer’s sector sets minimum pay by grade, and it is a better reference than converted foreign figures.
How should you read these numbers?
Pay statistics answer “what do people in this occupation earn”, not “what will I be offered”. A few points help translate them:
- Median, not mean. Half of workers earn less than the median. Means are pulled up by a few high earners.
- Definitions differ. The figures are before tax, and each survey has its own rules on bonuses, overtime and equity. Read the source notes before comparing the two countries.
- Location. Both the U.S. and the UK publish regional figures, and pay for the same occupation varies widely between regions.
- Industry and level. The industry spread above shows that the sector you join can matter as much as the job title. Entry-level offers usually sit toward the lower percentiles.
- Currencies do not convert cleanly. A dollar median and a pound median reflect different tax, healthcare and living costs. Compare within one country.
What does the job market signal?
Official projections point to steady demand for the occupations behind IoT work, but they say nothing about IoT specifically. More direct signals come from job ads. On our own jobs board, the titles that recur are embedded software and firmware engineers (often asking for C or C++, an RTOS or embedded Linux), hardware engineers and field application engineers, with a smaller number of OT security and computer vision roles. Few postings use the title IoT engineer at all.
The practical conclusion: pick the occupation that matches the work you want, use its official figures as your range, and build the skills that show up in the ads. The IoT engineer roadmap maps those skills by role.
Where to go next
- IoT engineer roadmap covers skills by role and a learning path.
- The jobs board lists current openings at IoT companies.
- IoT security fundamentals is a good first step toward security skills.
- Device management and over-the-air updates describes the fleet work that platform roles revolve around.
Topics: careers, salaries, jobs, BLS, ONS