Aerospace Engineer Salary in Texas 2026,
$130,270 Median | BLS Data by City

A median $130,270 a year, or $62.63 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 3.5% below the national median of $134,960, with no state income tax deducted. The band runs $82,990 at the 10th percentile to $195,190 at the 90th, with the middle half between $103,810 and $166,980. Programme seniority and clearance rather than location determine where inside that range an engineer sits.

Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington at $134,570, then Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands $133,970, San Antonio-New Braunfels $128,400, Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos $123,210 and Corpus Christi $117,840. Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston are within about six hundred dollars of each other despite representing completely different industries — defence aircraft manufacture and human spaceflight — which suggests engineers move freely between them.

Usually not. The Texas Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors licenses professional engineers, but the licence is required only to offer engineering services to the public or to seal engineering documents. Aerospace engineering performed inside a manufacturer, operator or space agency contractor falls under the industrial exemption and does not require it, which is why most Texas aerospace engineers never obtain the licence. What does gate the work is security clearance eligibility and compliance with export control requirements.

In two distinct clusters that share almost nothing except the occupational code. The Fort Worth area anchors defence aircraft manufacture and sustainment along with a deep supply chain, and it publishes the state's highest metro figure at $134,570. The Houston area and the Gulf coast anchor human spaceflight, mission operations and commercial launch, publishing $133,970. San Antonio-New Braunfels at $128,400 adds military aviation sustainment. A location quotient of 1.10 across about 6,750 engineers is the sum of those separate industries.

Very much so, and more than the 3.5% gap to the national median suggests. Aerospace employers generally set engineering salaries against national bands rather than local cost of living, so a Texas engineer receives a comparable gross to a Californian or Washington colleague and pays no state income tax on it. Property tax is the offsetting cost — among the higher effective rates in the country — but at these income levels the net position is clearly favourable.

Because from an engineer's point of view they demand the same things. Both are long-cycle, safety-critical, heavily documented programme environments with rigorous configuration management, both require security clearance and export-control compliance, and both value systems, structures, propulsion, avionics and thermal disciplines in similar proportions. An engineer who has spent five years on a defence aircraft programme is a credible hire for a spaceflight programme and vice versa, which makes the two clusters substitutes in the labour market. When two employers compete for the same people, their rates converge — and $134,570 against $133,970 is about as converged as two metro estimates get.

The estimate covers about 6,750 engineers across two industries with different funding cycles, so a single median smooths over real programme-level variation — a ramping launch programme and a sustainment contract in a procurement trough are very different employers in the same year. The wage measure also excludes clearance premiums, programme bonuses and, at commercial launch companies, equity. And OEWS does not distinguish cleared from uncleared roles, though in this state clearance is one of the most significant determinants of what an engineer can be paid.

Security clearance first — it is the gate to the majority of the state's aerospace work and cannot be substituted by any qualification. Programme criticality second: flight-critical and human-rated systems work carries more than support and ground systems. Discipline third, with propulsion, guidance and avionics generally ahead of manufacturing engineering. And technical leadership fourth, since chief engineer and programme technical lead roles are what reach the Texas 75th percentile of $166,980 and the 90th at $195,190 — all of it untaxed by the state.