Connect with professional civil engineers for advanced engineering projects

Cad Crowd professional civil engineers staffing & recruiting agency

Civil engineers carry on their shoulders a vast array of responsibilities and make decisions that potentially have a great impact on an entire project. Minimize your risk and let the Cad Crowd assist you in finding the right civil engineering talents to improve your chances of success.

What do civil engineers do?

Civil engineers have important roles in every aspect of the design, plan, and construction or renovation process of an infrastructure project. In nearly all cases, they work on government-operated facilities and physical structures such as roads, bridges, sewage systems, tunnels, and community enhancement projects. 

During the initial planning stage, they are responsible for conducting field investigations, risk analyses, evaluation of proposed construction methods, and technical feasibility assessments. In the design and preconstruction phases, civil engineers work on the site layout, design features requirement, environmental impacts, project timeline, resource allocation, and budget management as well. They use computer-aided design (CAD) software to create technical drawings, such as blueprints and floor plans, and they may produce visualizations for presentation purposes. It also falls within their duties to secure and review all the necessary permits before construction begins.

Throughout the construction process, they oversee progress and ensure everything is according to schedule and complies with safety regulations. The duty of oversight also requires the civil engineer to verify that all elements of the infrastructure are built in accordance with design specifications. At the conclusion of the project, they finalize completion details, including inspection reports and billing.

Civil engineers collaborate with architects and might be assisted by technicians, urban planners, and construction managers throughout a project. 

Your guide to hiring the right civil engineer for the right role

Cad Crowd is well aware of the challenges in matching a candidate’s qualifications with the job requirements, especially when the available position is for a civil engineering professional. In general, you can basically categorize talents and candidates into four groups, including:

• Qualified: fresh civil engineering talents who are actively looking for their first professional roles.
• Practicing: candidates currently in their early career with less than five years of work experience.
• Experienced: professional civil engineers with 5 – 10 years of experience who are not actively looking for new jobs (passive candidates). The category makes up more than 70% of the available civil engineering workforce. However, many of them would consider better options if presented with the right opportunities to advance.
• Specialist: candidates with more than ten years of experience as professional civil engineers. Most of them have become "at least" Engineering Managers or Principal Engineers in their companies or organizations; a few have made it to higher positions as Directors or Senior Executives. As such, they are least likely in search of new jobs.

For our recruiters, looking for talents from the “Qualified” and “Practicing” categories is pretty much a straightforward process because they are also actively seeking new opportunities. In fact, a sizable portion of our civil engineering talent database is filled with candidates from the two categories. The search for “Experienced” and “Specialist” professionals is inevitably arduous, but Cad Crowd assures you that it is nowhere near impossible.

With our resources and network of cross-industries contacts, we have the capability and experience to deliver the nation’s top-tier civil engineers straight to your doors. Cad Crowd offers customized staffing and recruiting solutions in accordance with clients’ specific needs; we always have a dedicated team of recruiters to discover talents from every category.

In addition to the simple categorization mentioned above, Cad Crowd adheres to the guidance compiled and issued by the American Society for Civil Engineering (ASCE) regarding the “expected” skills and general competence of civil engineers based on their experience levels. The guideline is a comprehensive rating system that ranks the professionals’ knowledge of the trade from Grade I to VIII.

Each grade represents the expectations of what the talents should and will do in their day-to-day activities in the organization. Engineers categorized under higher grades are capable of handling everything mentioned in the lower ones and are assigned to more complex tasks with greater responsibilities as well.

Grade I, II, and III Civil Engineers

All those three grades are good for entry-level civil engineering positions in your company. They have less than 4 years of experience and are not state-licensed yet. However, even the lowest-grade ones have a bachelor’s degree. Different organizations give them different job titles, for instance, Interns, Junior Engineers, Staff Engineers, Assistant Engineers, Engineers in Training, etc.

Grade IV Civil Engineers

They move up to Grade IV when they’ve accumulated 4 years of experience. Now that they’ve gotten more familiar with the more complex parts of a project, you can task them with slightly bigger responsibilities, such as making proposals, attending meetings with officials, and communicating with contractors. These engineers don’t need as much supervision as before, but you still have to provide guidance on nontypical issues. Some Grade IV engineers have master’s degrees and are state-licensed. Common job titles include Resident Engineer, Civil Engineer, and Associate Engineer.

Grade V Civil Engineers

After spending eight years in Grade IV, they can move up to the next level and call themselves Senior Engineers. You can let them handle complex projects and manage crucial aspects, including budget allocation and scheduling. When positioned as project managers, they have more freedom to develop new engineering techniques or improve the organization’s methods, making everything more efficient. At this grade, they should also qualify for membership in many professional organizations or even the national board.

Grade VI Civil Engineers

A decade of experience takes a civil engineer to Grade VI. Some organizations call them Principal Engineers. One of the main roles of Grade VI engineers is to provide technical advice on construction methods or new project concepts. They also create plans for organizational activities and generally act as the organization's representatives during meetings with clients, investors, or public officials. Every engineer at this level is state-licensed and has a certification in a specific engineering subdiscipline.

Grade VII Civil Engineers

These are the Directors or at least the Heads of Civil Engineering Departments in large organizations. Most small design agencies or engineering firms probably don’t have anyone more experienced than a Principal Engineer. Grade VII professionals are often highly specialized that they can develop new guidelines, practices, and standards in their areas of specialty. They provide guidance not just for one team but multiple departments in the company. If your company needs to maintain contact with other organizations and major public officials, you really need this kind of engineer. And before we forget to mention it, a 15-years of experience is required.

Grade VIII Civil Engineers

Finally, we arrive at the top with Grade VIII engineers, or what people usually refer to as the Directors of Public Works. Sitting at a position higher than anybody else, these engineers make important decisions that may affect the entire organization. You can rely on them to negotiate issues with the government, the competitors, and even the board of directors if necessary. In fact, with more than 20 years of experience, many Grade VIII civil engineers are members of the national boards of civil engineering.

As far as staffing is concerned, we can confidently say that the first several grades are active candidates. They are like explorers in the workforce market, willing to apply for new jobs for the experience. Sometimes, you don’t even have to offer bigger salaries, and they will still come knocking at your door.

The same thing can’t be said for the higher grades. Starting from Grade V, most talents are passive candidates and, therefore, naturally elusive. They’re not looking for new jobs because it doesn’t always make sense to switch companies when their current jobs are already rewarding enough. Still, it is not impossible for them to consider an offer if it comes with better compensation.

Do the grades reflect engineers' salaries, too?

In most cases, yes. Salaries and benefits for civil engineers typically increase as they move up the grades. Even if the guideline never existed at all, you’d want to be fair and offer bigger salaries to the more experienced employees as well.

The median annual salary for civil engineers in the United States is $89,940 in May 2022 (the latest data available from BLS). A median wage sits in the middle of the salary range for the profession, which means half of the workforce earns less, and the other half earns more. You can say that civil engineers from Grades 1 to 4 have a lower income than the median, whereas higher grades earn a bigger salary.

• If they’re still in their early career years (for example, Grades 1 to 3), BLS says that the annual wage is $61,040 or less.
• In contrast, the most experienced ones (such as Grades 6 to 8) earn more than $138,690.

Another thing to mention is that the guideline can be applied to various companies and organizations, such as construction firms, design agencies, and the local/federal government. However, the pay rate is different depending on the sectors where civil engineers work.

Civil engineers in the United States currently hold about 347,500 jobs. The first chart shows that the federal government is the highest-paying employer, with a median annual wage of $103,170. However, you can see in the second chart that it accounts for only 3% of the hired workforce. Now if you pay attention to the nonresidential construction industry, you should notice that it actually hires most of the workforce, but it has the lowest median annual salary.

Both charts exclude employment in education, hospitals, and postal services. 

No, your company doesn’t have to use the same guideline

There isn’t anybody anywhere to tell you that you should also use the same guideline. It is true that we find the ranking system by the ASCE useful for what we do as a staffing agency, but it was never meant as a regulation. Cad Crowd looks for talents and candidates on your behalf, so it does anybody no good if we stick to only one guideline created by an organization that probably has nothing to do with your company and business.

Cad Crowd listens to your needs and will play by your rules. There’s always a custom solution available for every client. It doesn’t even matter if they have different needs or come from different industries. You can always count on Cad Crowd to find the ideal civil engineering talents for your company.