System Engineer – Salary, degree and career opportunities

IT professional with prospects: what salary can a systems engineer expect after graduation?
In order to use the digital transformation as an opportunity for sustainable corporate development, specialists are needed who combine technical expertise with planning foresight. So it’s no wonder that system engineersarecurrently among the most sought-after IT specialists:Their holistic view of IT systems and their feel for the potential of future-oriented technologies enable them to always get the best out of the digital infrastructure – whether as a system architect, project manageror administrator. But what is this expertise worth to the economy: what salary can you expect as a system engineer?
To help you assess your market value as a specialist, we have analyzed StepStone ‘s comprehensive salary reports, which are published annually. Around 13,000 graduates1 were surveyed for the StepStone Salary Report for Graduates 2020/21 and 250,000 employees with at least two years of professional experience for the StepStone Salary Report 20212. What does this data reveal about career entry, promotion prospects and top salaries for system engineers in Germany? We’ll show you.
The data basis: IT specialists in the StepStone Salary Report
The most important thing to classify the data that we present to you below right up front: The StepStone salary reports record fields of study by group. Since software architecture specialists belong to the field of computer science, we will focus on the data relating to IT when we look at the salary for system engineers.
Why do we focus on these two surveys despite this vagueness, even though there are also studies tailored precisely to the IT sector, such as the CompensationPartner IT Study 20203? Quite simply: to maximize comparability. In the IT Study 2020, university graduates only make up around 60 percent of those surveyed – and comparing them with specialists with a completely different education will only help you to a limited extent when planning your career. To give you a representative impression of what salary you can expect as a systems engineer after graduating, we have therefore decided to evaluate two studies for you. The studies either deal exclusively with university graduates or at least evaluate the data of the academics surveyed separately.
What is the starting salary for System Engineers?
How much computer science graduates earn depends entirely on the degree and the type of entry-level position. According to the StepStone Salary Report Graduates 2020/21, the gross annual salary for career starters in computer science is 48,920 euros. This value is calculated as an average between 45,709 euros annual salary for graduates with a Bachelor’s degree and 50,978 euros for graduates with a Master’s degree in computer science. How well do newly qualified system engineers compare in terms of salary among the various disciplines? Let’s take a closer look at the data …
What is the starting salary for System Engineers with a Bachelor’s degree?
In 2020, graduates with a bachelor’s degree earned an average gross salary of 42,169 euros – and if it was a bachelor’s degree in computer science, they could look forward to an average starting salary of 45,709 euros gross. In fact, computer science is in third place in the ranking of the best-paid subject areas for career starters. IT is only surpassed by engineering (46,291 euros gross annual salary) and industrial engineering (47,073 euros gross annual salary) – and even that is less than 600 euros difference.
However, trainees are an important exception among career starters with a bachelor’s degree in computer science. Although you learn a lot “on the job” through a trainee position, you take on an intermediate position: On the one hand, you have a degree in computer science, but on the other hand you do not yet have the professional experience to take on the tasks of a computer science specialist without supervision and technical support from experienced colleagues. For this reason, the salary for trainees in all specialist areas is significantly lower than what you can earn as a graduate with a Bachelor’s degree if you have already gained the experience in internships and working student jobs that you now need to start directly as a system engineer.
What is the starting salary for System Engineers with a Master’s degree?
As a graduate of the Steinbeis Master’s degree program in Systems Engineering, you have two clear advantages when negotiating your starting salary: Firstly, during the course of your project competence studies, you were able to gain exactly the practical experience that will now allow you to skip trainee positions with ease. Secondly, with a Master’s degree you can also start directly as a systems engineer at a higher salary level than graduates with a Bachelor’s degree in systems engineering. In a cross-section of all specialist areas, the StepStone salary report for graduates with a Master’s degree calculated a gross salary of 47,370 euros – and in IT, the average annual gross salary is even higher at 50,978 euros.
However, a look at the ranking of the top degree programs for a high starting salary after a Master’s degree reveals a somewhat confusing picture: Here we find that IT – compared to the ranking for graduates with a bachelor’s degree in computer science – has suddenly dropped from third place to fourth. However, this is due to the structure of the StepStone Graduate Salary Report: First and third place among young professionals with a Master’s degree are occupied by degree programs that, strictly speaking, do not even belong in this ranking. After all, doctors and dentists (59,486 euros gross annual salary) and law graduates (52,329 euros gross annual salary) do not complete their studies with a Master’s degree, so they distort the data here somewhat. If we exclude these two groups, we can see much more clearly: although computer scientists are also behind industrial engineers (€52,832 annual gross salary) among graduates with a Master’s degree, they have overtaken business informatics (€50,905 annual gross salary).
How your salary develops as a system engineer with professional experience: career opportunities & top salaries
Your professional experience will initially determine how quickly and how far your salary as a systems engineer will rise. On average, the StepStone Salary Report 2021 shows an average annual gross salary of 55,968 euros for specialists with a Bachelor’s degree and 61,816 euros for experts with a Master’s degree. The progression of salaries over time in the field of computer science is particularly exciting:
- Less than 1 year of professional experience: Ø 41,368 euros (gross)
- 3-5 years of professional experience: Ø 51,404 euros (gross)
- 6-10 years of professional experience: Ø 60,264 euros (gross)
Ideally, you can increase your salary as a system engineer by up to 25 percent within the first five years. The StepStone Salary Report 2021 also provides a second important suggestion for your career planning: Managers in IT earn up to 20 percent more than comparably qualified specialists without management responsibility. If the average salary for an experienced IT specialist is around 60,563 euros, you can earn a salary of over 72,000 euros as a system engineer if you not only excel as an expert in IT systems, but also as a manager.
If you enjoy developing new research projects and would like to increase your salary as a systems engineer even further, it may also be worthwhile tackling a doctorate. In 2020, graduates with a doctorate already received an average starting salary of €56,260 gross – and the salary report for experienced professionals even lists an impressive €81,587 per year for IT experts with a doctorate.
How the company, industry and area of responsibility influence your salary as a system engineer
The salary you can expect as a system engineer depends on your qualifications and experience, but also on which company you apply to for which position. In addition to the size of the company, the location is also a decisive factor, as starting salaries in almost all sectors are currently higher in the south-west of Germany – especially in Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and Hesse – than in the new federal states.
In order to achieve an above-average starting salary as a system engineer, you should thereforefocuson positions at companies in south-western Germany with more than 1,000employees. For career starters, the strategic choice of location and company size can make a difference of up to 10,000 euros per year, depending on the constellation, and for experienced system engineers a difference in salary of up to 15,000 euros.
These industries offer the best salary for System Engineers
Bystrategically choosingthe industry in which youworkas a graduate, specialist or manager, you can further increase your salary as a system engineer. If we compare, for example, the average annual salary for female bachelor’s graduatesin all subjects in the automotive industry (51,664 euros gross) with the average starting salary for female IT graduatesin the same industry (55,464 euros gross), it becomes clear that in some cases you can earn several thousand euros more than colleaguesfrom other disciplinesin your first job after graduation.
According to the StepStone Graduate Salary Report 2020/21, the following five sectors currently offer the best starting salaries for computer science graduates:
- Vehicle construction/supplier – Ø 55,464 euros (gross)
- Pharmaceutical industry – Ø 52,217 euros (gross)
- Energy and water supply and waste disposal – Ø 51,951 euros (gross)
- Insurance – Ø 51,916 euros (gross)
- Financial services provider – Ø 51,326 euros (gross)
For IT specialists with some professional experience, however, this ranking looks very different:
- Banks – Ø 71,284 euros (gross)
- Chemical and petroleum processing industry – Ø 70,826 euros (gross)
- Vehicle construction/supplier – Ø 70,039 euros (gross)
- Consumer goods/ consumer durables – Ø 68,759 euros (gross)
- Pharmaceutical industry – Ø 68,362 euros (gross)
For your career planning, it is therefore worth comparing the data from both salary reports: this will give you a good overview of the promotion opportunities within certain sectors and at the same time help you to find out in which direction you might want to develop in the long term.
These are the most lucrative areas of work for System Engineers
In addition to the company and the industry, the third factor that has a strong impact on your earning potential is your area of activity within corporate IT. For experienced specialists, the following areas of responsibility offered the greatest opportunities in 2020:
- IT architecture – Ø 80,745 euros (gross)
- IT security – Ø 70,694 euros (gross)
- SAP – Ø 68,435 euros (gross)
- Project management – Ø 67,714 euros (gross)
- Databases – Ø 62,949 euros (gross)
Incidentally, the best-paid IT job of 2020 was also a home game for anyone who had already developed a holistic view of IT systems as part of their computer science degree: As Solution Architects, trained System Engineers were able to secure an average salary of 82,401 euros (gross).
What remains invisible in the salary report
Admittedly: If we compare it with the salary data shared by users on relevant career portals on the internet, the data from the StepStone salary reports is much more reliable. Nevertheless, these studies also have certain weaknesses that you should keep in mind when planning and optimizing your salary as a systems engineer based on them.
First of all, we should bear in mind that the StepStone Salary Report for Graduates 2020/21 determines the average starting salaries in IT – as already mentioned at the beginning – regardless of the respondent’s specific field of study. Specializations such as systems engineering, which give you a big advantage in the competition for the best-paid jobs, are equated to a certain extent with the “classic” all-round IT degree.
In addition, although the average salaries shown in the salary reports include variable components such as premiums, bonuses or commission, they do not include any additional benefits provided by the company. What does this mean in concrete terms? Imagine your employer provides you with a company car or a company bike: this gives you a financial advantage that would remain invisible in the StepStone statistics because it is not part of your salary in the strict sense. So it remains unclear how far up you can actually go: for specialists like you, the salary reports provide more of a financial baseline than a real horizon.
As far as career opportunities and salary trends for Systems Engineers are concerned, we therefore prefer to combine the data from the studies with the experiences of SMT graduates: Many of them remain loyal as Systems Engineers to the very companies where they were already working during their Project Competence Studies®. This enables them to specialize in very specific areas of the company at an early stage – and thus increase their market value all the more efficiently as their professional experience grows.
All information about the Master of Science in IT System Engineering at the School of Management and Technology can be found here!

Further useful links
1 See https://www.stepstone.de/wissen/einstiegsgehalt/, last accessed on 29.03.2021, 14:50.
2 Cf. https://www. stepstone.de/wissen/gehaltsreport-2021, last accessed on 29.03.2021, 10:08 a.m.
3 See https://www.compensation-partner.de/de/news-und-presse/it-studie-2020-pressemitteilung, last accessed on 27.03.2021, 12:05.