As I am in the preliminary stages, my wife and I were thinking of moving to the Bay Area. My concern is whether or not the Civil engineering job market is good, and what I could expect to make comparatively speaking. Currently, I live in Maryland, have my EIT, and plan on sitting for my PE exam in October '06, and have delt with everything related to residential land development.

If anyone has some time to respond and answer a few questions, I would appreciate it very much.

Thanks for your time!

 

What field? My dad is a civil engineer in transportation planning.

Good luck on the PE...I just took the mechanical PE exam a couple weeks ago, and I'm glad to be done with that!

 

First off, thanks for the response.

Mainly, I deal with the design of public utilities including Roads (vertically and horizontally), storm drains (profiling, hydraulics), sanitary profiling, public water systems design, and stormwater management facilities.
Other aspects involve grading, setting retainingwalls, sediment control, and flood plain studies.

I design all of these with through AutoCadd 2004 and its advanced features (terrain, profiles, alignments, etc.)

Thanks again and congrats on sitting for your exam, i hope you did well.

 

It seems that most consulting firms out there are struggling to hire experienced engineers right now, so you shouldn't have too much trouble finding work. We have actually had to turn down new jobs lately b/c we don't have enough staff to cover all the work.

 

Things are no different here. The housing market is has been off the charts, so needless to say, we can't keep up either. Experienced people are virtually non-existent.


I really don't think I will have a problem finding something either if / when I relocate. I guess I just want to find a good contact who can give me some reliable information about the area and job oppurtunities, and these boards have been very helpful to me in the past (for misc. things). I really want to stay away from asking a headhunter as they may just tell you something to get you in the door.

 

EWRX05

I am also a civil engineer.
Send me your resume if you are really interested in moving out here. My company is definately hiring for mid level project engineers right now, especially if you are well versed in CAD. Sounds like you do a lot of the stuff that we do here. Except we don't deal really with residential development much, most of our clients are public agencies.

Here is my companies website if you want more info on what we do www.harris-assoc.com

PM if you have any questions or want to discuss anything else.

 

Thanks Ish - Pm'd You.