How To Become A Stress Engineer: What It Is and Career Path

What is a stress engineer and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

3 min read

Stress engineers play a vital role in the engineering of aircraft. Their main role is to determine the stresses and strains in materials and structures when subjected to forces and heavy loads. In the aviation industry, this will mainly relate to aircraft and rocket bodies. However, the analysis could also take place on anything from bridges, tunnels, and down to plastic cutlery.

While a majority of sources see annual salaries of stress engineers as high as $176,500 and as low as $61,000, the majority of stress engineer salaries currently range between $85,000 and $147,000.

To become a stress engineer, applicants need to have a college degree in engineering and an interest in stress analysis. In-depth knowledge of engineering principles and design techniques related to failure analysis, materials science, structural design, and reliability may also be needed for this job.

ScoreStress EngineerUS Average

Salary

7.8

Avg. Salary $107,036

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability Level

5.4

Growth Rate 6%

Growth Rate 0.3%

Diversity

7.4

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.30%

Asian 19.77%

Black or African American 3.79%

Hispanic or Latino 8.86%

Unknown 4.27%

White 63.01%

Gender

female 10.27%

male 89.73%

Age - 43

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 43

Stress Level

5.4

Stress level is manageable

7.1 - high

Complexity Level

8.0

Complexity Level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work Life Balance

5.7

Work Life balance is fair

6.4 - fair

Key steps to become a stress engineer

Explore stress engineer education requirements

Most common stress engineer degrees

Bachelor's

74.8 %

Master's

19.4 %

Doctorate

2.4 %

Start to develop specific stress engineer skills

Skills	Percentages
Finite Element Analysis	9.96%
Structural Analysis	8.80%
Autocad	5.82%
Fatigue Analysis	4.87%
MRB	4.70%

Complete relevant stress engineer training and internships

Accountants spend an average of 6-12 months on post-employment, on-the-job training. New stress engineers learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a stress engineer based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real stress engineer resumes.

Research stress engineer duties and responsibilities

Lead CFD analyses on various aircraft types.
Manage the development and design data in PDM to ensure successful completion.
Manage Jenkins security by providing specific access to authorize developers/testers using project base matrix authorization strategy.
Develop Perl, TCL, and Bourne shell tools to improve the CFD process.

Get stress engineer experience

Generally, it takes 2-4 years to become a stress engineer. The most common roles before becoming a stress engineer include stress analyst, design engineer team lead and mechanical engineer.

Prepare your stress engineer resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your stress engineer resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a stress engineer resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose From 10+ Customizable Stress Engineer Resume templates

Build a professional Stress Engineer resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your Stress Engineer resume.

Apply for stress engineer jobs

Now it's time to start searching for a stress engineer job. Consider the tips below for a successful job search:

Browse job boards for relevant postings
Consult your professional network
Reach out to companies you're interested in working for directly
Watch out for job scams

How do stress engineers rate their job?

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Stress Engineer reviews

A zippia user wrote a review on Aug 2023

Cons

Very hard job. Will definitely get home late and you have to be mega smart.