The Datum Report

Occupation 2123 · Professional occupations

Electrical engineers

Half of full-time electrical engineers in the UK earn more than £60,303 a year, and half earn less.

Electrical engineers undertake research and design, direct construction and manage the operation and maintenance of electrical equipment, power stations, building control systems and other electrical products and systems.

How people enter it

Electrical engineers usually possess an accredited university degree or equivalent qualification. After qualifying, periods of appropriate training and experience are required before membership of a chartered engineering institution is attainable. Incorporated engineers possess an accredited university degree, BTEC/SQA award or an apprenticeship leading to an NVQ/SVQ at level 4. All routes are followed by periods of appropriate training and relevant experience.

What the work involves

• conceives and develops engineering designs from product ideas in electrical engineering
• supervises, controls and monitors the operation of electrical generation, transmission and distribution systems
• determines and specifies manufacturing methods of electrical systems
• ensures that manufacture, operation and maintenance comply with design specifications and contractual arrangements
• organises and establishes control systems to monitor the performance and safety of electrical assemblies and systems

Also called

Electrical design engineer · Electrical engineer (professional) · Electrical surveyor · Equipment engineer · Power engineer · Signal engineer (professional, railways)

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for electrical engineers, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 5 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Aerospace engineers · Civil engineers · Electronics engineers (professional) · Engineering professionals n.e.c. · Engineering project managers and project engineers · Mechanical engineers (professional) · Production and process engineers