Software Engineer Career Path
All the insights below are based on Jobtrees users’ actual career paths, aggregated together, instantaneously, to show you the real and unique most common career progression for each role. Use this as inspiration for your next job and to re-calibrate expectations for what success is in your next career step. After you search, toggle over to the Family View to see what roles are in the same job family. Use this to get a sense of the hierarchy of roles within this job family and inspiration for other jobs you can target.
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The career path for a
Based on 1688 Jobtrees users who were a Software Engineer in their career, on average, they have 2.28 years of experience and 2 jobs prior to this one. They spend 3.3 years on average in this job building experience and earn $111K per year before moving on.
17% of Jobtrees users moved to another job with this same title in their next career step. The most common career steps after Software Engineer are Senior Software Engineer, Web Developer and Software Engineering Intern. Senior Software Engineer, the most common next career step, is of similar seniority which is common to see in career paths as people will often move between jobs and roles at the same level as they build experience and explore other jobs. While Senior Software Engineer is from the same job family, Engineering - Software, there are other common opportunities outside this discipline that Jobtrees users are taking as shown by Web Developer, also being a common career path to Software Engineer.
Find more insights below about this specific career path based on our Jobtrees users' experience.
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The roles above are the most common next steps in our users’ career paths.
Use the + button and watch the ‘branches grow’. It adds another level of potential career steps based on the most common paths taken by Jobtrees’ users.
Software Engineer
Senior Software Engineer
Web Developer
Software Engineering Intern
Software Developer
Senior Software Engineer
Software Engineering Intern
User Experience Designer
Software Developer
Teaching Assistant
The roles below are the most common previous steps in our users’ career paths.
Use the + button and watch the ‘roots grow’. It adds another level of potential previous career steps based on the most common paths taken by Jobtrees’ users.Read insights on these paths here
Understand more about the career path
How can I become a
The most common career steps to get to Software Engineer are Senior Software Engineer, Software Engineering Intern and User Experience Designer based on actual career paths reported to Jobtrees.
Senior Software Engineer, the most common step before Software Engineer, is of similar seniority which is common to see in career paths. People will often move between jobs and roles at the same level as they explore new types and gain experience for more senior roles.
While Senior Software Engineer is the most common, there is no specific role leading to Software Engineer that is an overwhelmingly common path. Another characteristic of the Software Engineer career path is that experience within the same job family as this role isn't common and as a result likely not necessary. This shows there are many potential paths to becoming a Software Engineer so focusing on translatable skills is likely more important than a specific role.
While Senior Software Engineer isn't from the same job family as Software Engineer, Engineering - Software, it can help to have direct experience in this discipline shown by Software Engineering Intern also being a common career path to Software Engineer.
If you are looking for more potential career paths to Software Engineer,you should also consider Research Assistant as they commonly lead to Software Engineer as well.
What should I know about the career path
Career paths aren't linear with people often returning to a prior role which is what you see with Senior Software Engineer being the most common role to and from Software Engineer. This is common when people move to companies of different sizes or choose to return to a function they fit well with. Career paths aren't linear with people often returning to a prior role which is what you see with Senior Software Engineer being on the path to and from Software Engineer. This is common when people move to companies of different sizes or choose to return to a function they fit well with.
Software Engineer is part of the Engineering - Software job family which has a variety of unique role within that discipline. Choosing to pursue a role within this family likely will mean that you will need to look outside of your discipline to find new roles and so should focus on related skills as part of that search.
Other common titles that have similar job requirements and career paths as Software Engineer are Software Engineer (contractor), Software Engineer Ii, Software Engineer, Machine Learning.