CAREER & HIRING ADVICE

Texas is the third-largest mechanical-engineering job market in the United States and one of the largest licensed Mechanical PE populations in the country. As of September 10, 2026, the Texas Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors listed 12,221 Active Mechanical PEs on the public roster.

Mechanical (MEC) is the second-largest licensed branch after Civil: 12,043 of those Active licenses carry Mechanical as the primary branch, and another 178 list it as a second or third branch. The full Texas PE roster that day held 79,453 licenses.

Those license counts are not the same thing as jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 22,080 people employed as mechanical engineers in Texas in May 2025 (SOC 17-2141), third nationally behind Michigan (34,630) and California (30,530). Nationally, BLS estimated 296,810 mechanical-engineer jobs that year.

The two numbers sit farther apart than they did for Civil engineers in Texas. Civil showed 32,697 Active Civil PEs against 34,870 BLS jobs. Mechanical shows 12,221 Active Mechanical PEs against 22,080 BLS jobs.

That gap is expected. Many mechanical engineers work in manufacturing, energy services, and product design under industrial exemptions or under a supervising PE. BLS counts people working in the occupation inside Texas, including unlicensed graduates and engineers-in-training.

The Board counts people who hold a renewable Texas PE with Mechanical on the license, including some who live or work elsewhere. Texas issues a single PE license. HVAC, rotating equipment, piping stress, fire protection, and plant mechanical work are sealed under that PE when a seal is required.

Where Texas mechanical engineers work

Employment follows energy, manufacturing, and the same metropolitan triangle that holds most of the state’s 31.7 million residents. Houston is the center of gravity. In May 2025, the Houston–Pasadena–The Woodlands metro employed 8,310 mechanical engineers — the third-largest mechanical-engineer metro in the country, behind only Detroit and Los Angeles. That one metro accounts for about 38 percent of statewide mechanical-engineer employment.

Pay maps the same industrial geography. Energy metros sit above the state median. Office-and-manufacturing metros sit closer to it.

Houston’s 90th percentile reaches $198,730. Beaumont’s 90th percentile is $191,580. Those tails are process plants, LNG, refining, and large EPC projects, not typical building-HVAC salaries.

The official roster does not publish home addresses, but employer names point the same way.

After combining obvious name variants on the September 2026 Active Mechanical file, the largest identifiable private employers include Burns & McDonnell, Jacobs, BP, Stantec, Atmos Energy, Bechtel Energy, HDR, Kiewit, Wood Group, Chevron, Baker Hughes, TechnipFMC, CPS Energy, Southland Industries, SLB, Williams, Southwest Research Institute, and ExxonMobil. About 1,186 Active Mechanical rows have a blank employer field. Fire Protection is the most common second branch, followed by Electrical and Civil.

What mechanical engineers in Texas earn

BLS May 2025 wage data for mechanical engineers:

The Texas median is $112,410, or $54.05 an hour. That is about 8 percent above the U.S. median of $104,110. The Texas mean is higher still, at $121,510, against a national mean of $113,610. Mechanical pay in Texas also runs well above Civil: the companion Civil article used a Texas Civil median of $96,860 from the same May 2025 OEWS vintage.

Nationally, the Occupational Outlook Handbook puts mechanical-engineer median pay at $104,110 in May 2025 and projects 11 percent job growth from 2025 to 2035 — much faster than average — adding about 33,500 jobs, with roughly 17,800 openings a year.

An earlier BLS table for 2024–34 had mechanical engineering growing 9.1 percent, from 293,100 to 319,600 jobs. Texas Career Check, using state labor-market projections, puts 2024 Texas employment at 18,235 and projects 21,630 jobs by 2034, about 1,346 openings a year. The OEWS count (22,080 in May 2025) and the projections base (18,235 in 2024) are different surveys. Both point the same direction: the occupation is growing.

The license pipeline

Mechanical is a relatively established branch on the Texas roster. The median Active Mechanical license was granted in 2015. About 3,870 Active Mechanical PEs — 32 percent — received their Texas license in 2020 or later. Another 4,524 were granted in the 2010s.

The universities feeding that pipeline are among the largest mechanical programs in the country. At UT Austin’s Cockrell School, Fall 2025 enrollment included 1,261 mechanical-engineering undergraduates and 428 mechanical-engineering graduate students. In 2024–25 the school awarded 270 mechanical bachelor’s degrees, 96 master’s (83 standard plus 13 Option 3), and 44 doctorates. Mechanical is the second-largest undergraduate major in the school after electrical and computer engineering.

Texas A&M’s J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering is larger. Department facts current as of 2025 list 1,472 undergraduates, 245 master’s students, and 339 doctoral students, with 433 bachelor’s, 146 master’s, and 47 doctoral degrees awarded in the latest reporting year. U.S. News ranked the public undergraduate program 8th and the graduate program 6th. Texas Tech, UT Dallas, the University of Houston, and UT Arlington also graduate substantial mechanical classes.

A PE is not automatic with the diploma. Texas still requires an accredited degree, the FE exam, qualifying experience, and the PE exam. Many mechanical graduates go into manufacturing or product roles that never require a personal seal. That is one reason the BLS job count exceeds the Active Mechanical PE count by nearly 10,000 people.

Why the demand stays high

Texas mechanical work is not one market. It is several stacked on top of each other.

Energy still dominates Houston, Beaumont, Corpus Christi, Midland, and the Gulf Coast. Refineries, chemical plants, LNG trains, pipelines, and upstream equipment all need mechanical engineers for rotating equipment, pressure systems, heat transfer, and plant reliability. Roster employers — Bechtel, TechnipFMC, Baker Hughes, SLB, Wood, Chevron, BP, ExxonMobil, Williams — are that stack made visible.

Buildings and infrastructure pull a second stack. HVAC, plumbing, fire protection, and central plants sit under Mechanical PEs in every fast-growing metro. Southland Industries, Burns & McDonnell, Jacobs, HDR, Stantec, WSP, and Atmos Energy show up on the roster for that reason. Fire Protection as a second branch is a tell: a subset of Mechanical PEs seals life-safety systems as well as HVAC.

A third stack is manufacturing and technology. Advanced manufacturing around Austin, defense production in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, NASA Johnson Space Center, and Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio all hire mechanical engineers. Those jobs do not always appear as a PE on the public roster. They do show up in the BLS occupation count.

Population growth keeps adding building-systems work. Census estimates put Texas at 31.7 million people in July 2025. New residents become hospitals, schools, data centers, warehouses, and multifamily towers — all of which need mechanical design.

The ASCE Texas Section’s 2025 Infrastructure Report Card graded energy a C and wastewater a D-. Those grades are civil-infrastructure headlines, but the plants behind them are full of pumps, boilers, compressors, and piping. Mechanical engineers design that equipment.

How to read the statistics

Three cautions keep the numbers honest.

First, Mechanical on a PE license is not the same as every mechanical-engineer job title. BLS occupation 17-2141 includes people who design products, tools, engines, and HVAC systems. The Texas roster’s Mechanical branch is the closest public license tag. Some licensed Mechanical PEs work in fire protection, process, or marine work. Some BLS mechanical engineers never sit for the PE.

Second, the public roster is thinner than it used to be. Senate Bill 510, effective September 1, 2023, removed mailing addresses, phone numbers, and email addresses of individual licensees from the published file. Employer name, PE number, status, dates, and branches remain.

Third, headcount is not capacity. An Active license means the holder may practice. It does not say how many hours they bill or whether they still do design work. Inactive licenses are current but not valid for active practice; 1,825 Mechanical PEs were Inactive on the September 2026 roster and are not in the Active file.

Put next to the Civil companion piece, the picture is simple. Civil is the larger licensed workforce in Texas and the larger BLS occupation. Mechanical is smaller on the roster, closer to energy and manufacturing, and better paid. Texas employs more mechanical engineers than every state except Michigan and California.

It licenses more than 12,000 of them in Active status. Houston alone employs more mechanical engineers than most states. Median pay is $112,410, with a long upper tail in the energy metros. The universities are producing hundreds of new mechanical graduates a year. That combination — a licensed core, a larger unlicensed job market, and an energy-plus-buildings demand stack — is the basic statistic on mechanical engineers in Texas.

Sources

1. Texas Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors, PE Roster Search
2. TBPELS official PE roster download (ZIP/CSV), retrieved September 10, 2026
3. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS May 2025, Mechanical Engineers (SOC 17-2141)
4. O*NET OnLine, Texas and metro wages for Mechanical Engineers
5. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Mechanical Engineers
6. O*NET OnLine, national employment trends for Mechanical Engineers
7. Texas Career Check, Mechanical Engineers occupation summary
8. America by Numbers, Mechanical Engineers salary in Texas (BLS 2025)
9. U.S. Census Bureau QuickFacts: Texas
10. UT Austin Cockrell School, Program Enrollments and Degrees
11. Texas A&M Mechanical Engineering, Facts and Figures
12. ASCE Texas Section, 2025 Texas Infrastructure Report Card
13. ASCE, “Civil Engineers: Texas Infrastructure Grade Remains a ‘C’”
14. Texas Legislature, Senate Bill 510
15. Companion article: Statistics on Civil Engineers in Texas (same roster vintage and BLS May 2025 OEWS)