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Engineering Internship Salary Discussion

The pay for an Engineering Internship or Co-op varies depending on your exact field, what company you work for, and where the job is located. The good news is that most engineering students are paid well for their work.

When I first co-oped in June of 2000, I earned just under $20 an hour for software development work in Austin. At that employer the actual pay depended on your education level (pay depended on what year you were in for undergraduates, and was higher for grad students). The hourly pay also seemed to depend on what college you attended.

Intern and co-op pay in Austin for engineering students seems to still hover around $20 / hour, with some places paying a few dollars more, and others paying a few dollars less.

If you look at hourly wages for interns in California, the variation is mucn larger. My limited research has turned up hourly wages ranging from the $16 range to more than $40 / hour. I expect that a student will get paid in the high end of this range at a large competitive company like Google, and at the low end of the range at a small startup.

Researching Salaries

The very best resource I have found for researching any salary is Glassdoor.com. You'll need to create a login and probably share a salary to get access to their data, but it is worth the trouble. Glassdoor.com gives salary ranges by company, location, and position. On top of that data, you'll find job listings, reviews (yes, employees review their employers), and more.

Learning More

If you want to learn even more about how to get an internship or coop, how to impress your employer, and how to turn your internship into a job offer, be sure to check out Conquering Your Engineering Internship.