September 18, 2001 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Sales engineers: technical expertise plus people skills

Median annual earnings (including commissions) of sales engineers were $54,360 in 1999.

[Chart data—TXT]

The middle 50 percent of sales engineers earned between $41,500 and $77,370 a year. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $31,520 a year and the highest 10 percent earned more than $96,640.

Sales engineers meld the features of two very different occupations, using their technical skills and problem-solving abilities as well as their enjoyment of working with people. They often work with both the customer and the production or engineering departments of their companies to help design or modify products and services to suit the customer's needs. Sales engineers are sometimes called manufacturers' agents, sales representatives, or technical sales support workers.

In addition to their typical benefits such as health insurance and vacation pay, most sales engineers are reimbursed for business expenses. These include transportation, meals, hotels, and customer entertainment; many sales engineers also enjoy personal use of a company car and earn frequent-flyer mileage.

These data are a product of the Occupational Employment Statistics program. For further information see "Sales Engineers," by Andrew J Nelson, Occupational Outlook Quarterly, Fall 2001. Note about the chart: deciles divide the dataset into 10 equal-size groups and quartiles divide the dataset into 4 equal-size groups.