Talent Maps / Dallas-Fort Worth / Electrical Engineers

Dallas-Fort Worth Electrical Engineer Talent Map (2026)

What electrical engineers earn in Dallas-Fort Worth, which employers hold the talent, where in the Metroplex they work, and the grid, chip and data center projects competing for them.

Hiring electrical engineers in DFW?

A talent map shows where a group of professionals works, what they are paid and who else is trying to hire them. This one covers electrical engineers in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metro area. Pay figures come from the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics wage survey (May 2025), and the demand picture uses utility, grid and company data published in 2026. Our electrical engineering recruiters update it as new data comes out. See also our DFW controls, civil, mechanical and data center engineer talent maps.

$124,390Median electrical engineer pay in Dallas-Fort WorthBLS, May 2025

$205,040+What the top 10% of DFW electrical engineers earnBLS, May 2025

15,170Electrical engineers employed in TexasProjections Central, 2024

1,060Projected electrical engineering job openings a year in Texas through 2034Projections Central

$47.5BOncor’s 2026 to 2030 base capital plan for the North Texas gridOncor, February 2026

91,134 MWERCOT’s all-time peak demand record, set July 22, 2026ERCOT (preliminary)

Electrical engineer salaries in Dallas-Fort Worth

The median electrical engineer in Dallas-Fort Worth earns $124,390 a year, about $3,760 more than the national median of $120,630 and a little below the Texas median of $129,450. The top of the market pays very well: DFW’s highest-paid 10% earn $205,040 or more, about $20,700 above the national figure.

Annual pay percentile	DFW metro	Texas	United States
10th percentile	$76,720	$76,120	$76,550
25th percentile	$89,410	$95,130	$92,830
Median	$124,390	$129,450	$120,630
75th percentile	$161,080	$164,730	$152,950
90th percentile	$205,040	$210,160	$184,300

Electrical Engineers (SOC 17-2071). Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS, May 2025, via O*NET OnLine. Wage surveys run about a year behind current offers.

Electronics engineers, who design circuits, chips and radar systems, earn even more: a DFW median of $135,150, with the top 10% at $207,410 or more. Electrical and electronic engineering technicians earn a median of $75,580 in DFW and $79,360 in the Sherman-Denison metro, where the new chip fabs are hiring.

What the spread means in practice: the gap between the 25th percentile ($89,410) and the 75th ($161,080) is unusually wide. Engineers with power systems, semiconductor or defense electronics experience sit at the top of it, and employers hiring for those skills should not anchor on the median.

Where DFW’s electrical engineers work

Electrical engineers in the Metroplex work across four main kinds of employer, from the region’s grid operators to some of the largest chip and defense electronics companies in the country.

Utilities and power

Oncor, headquartered in Dallas, delivers power to more than 4.1 million homes and businesses over more than 145,000 circuit miles of lines. Vistra, the parent of TXU Energy and Luminant, is headquartered in Irving with about 5,400 employees.

Public and cooperative utilities include Garland Power & Light, the fourth-largest municipal utility in Texas, Denton Municipal Electric and CoServ, which serves more than 343,000 electric meters.

Semiconductors

Texas Instruments is headquartered in Dallas with more than 33,000 employees worldwide. Its Richardson fabs include RFAB1, the world’s first 300mm analog fab, and RFAB2. Its first Sherman fab began production in December 2025.

GlobalWafers opened its Sherman wafer plant in 2025. Diodes Inc. is headquartered in Plano, and Qorvo has a major Richardson site.

Defense and telecom

Raytheon has more than 6,000 employees in North Texas working on radars and electronics. L3Harris runs aircraft missionization facilities in Greenville, and Lockheed Martin’s Fort Worth plant employs 19,000.

Ericsson’s US headquarters is in Plano, with a 5G factory in Lewisville and antenna research in Richardson. AT&T is headquartered in downtown Dallas and is building a new headquarters campus in Plano.

Engineering and power contractors

Jacobs and Primoris are headquartered in Dallas, and Primoris runs its power line services business from Fort Worth. Burns & McDonnell has about 230 staff in Fort Worth and 140 in Dallas and plans to grow its Fort Worth office past 500 by 2027.

Black & Veatch and MEP firms also hire power and building electrical engineers, especially for data centers. See our DFW data center talent map.

Where the talent sits: DFW submarkets

Electrical engineering talent in the Metroplex is concentrated in the north, but utilities and defense keep large teams in Dallas, Irving and Fort Worth.

Richardson Telecom Corridor

SemiconductorsTelecomDefense

The city calls itself the second-largest employment center in the Metroplex, with more than 1,000 employers, half of them in tech, including TI, Qorvo, RTX, Collins Aerospace and Cisco.

Plano

TelecomSemiconductors

Ericsson’s US headquarters, Diodes headquarters and AT&T’s future headquarters campus on Legacy Drive.

Dallas core and Irving

UtilitiesPower design

Oncor, TI, Jacobs and Primoris headquarters in Dallas, and Vistra headquarters in Irving’s Las Colinas.

Fort Worth

DefensePower delivery

Lockheed Martin’s F-35 plant, Burns & McDonnell’s growing office and Primoris Power Line Services.

Sherman-Denison

SemiconductorsFab technicians

TI’s Sherman fabs and GlobalWafers, about an hour north of Dallas. Technician pay here is higher than in DFW itself.

What’s driving demand for electrical engineers in DFW

Oncor’s grid build-out. Oncor’s base capital plan is about $47.5 billion for 2026 to 2030, with about $10 billion more in possible projects. At the end of 2025 it had 650 large commercial and industrial requests in its queue, including about 255 GW from data centers. Total requests reached 298 GW in the second quarter of 2026.
New transmission. Oncor’s southern DFW and I-35 corridor projects total more than $7 billion, support about 16 GW of load and come into service between 2026 and 2034.
Record demand. ERCOT set an all-time peak of 91,134 MW on July 22, 2026, and about 474 GW of large loads, roughly 90% of them data centers, have asked to connect to the Texas grid.
A pause on new data center connections. On August 3, 2026, Governor Abbott ordered an audit of data centers in ERCOT’s queue before more can connect. The audit will slow some projects, but the grid upgrades already underway still need engineers.
Chip fabs. TI’s Sherman site plans up to four fabs and about 3,000 jobs, and GlobalWafers plans to grow to up to 650 jobs by the end of 2028.
Data centers. CBRE counts 1,432.8 MW of data center capacity in DFW, the third-largest market in North America. Every campus needs power, substation and building electrical design.

Electrical specialties in demand

Transmission and substation engineers for Oncor and its contractors.
Protection and controls engineers for utilities and large-load interconnections.
Power systems and interconnection study engineers for data centers, generation and storage.
Building electrical and MEP engineers for data centers, hospitals and commercial projects.
Analog, mixed-signal and process engineers for TI, Diodes and the Sherman fabs.
RF, radar and hardware engineers for Raytheon, L3Harris, Lockheed Martin and Ericsson.

The talent pipeline

UT Dallas. The Erik Jonsson School had 694 bachelor’s, 125 master’s and 166 doctoral students in electrical engineering in fall 2025. U.S. News ranks its graduate electrical engineering program No. 57 for 2026.
UT Arlington. UTA’s BS in electrical engineering has been ABET accredited continuously since 1965.
SMU. The Lyle School of Engineering offers an ABET-accredited BS in electrical and computer engineering.
UNT. The University of North Texas had 429 students in its ABET-accredited electrical engineering program in fall 2025.
Growth. Texas is projected to grow from 15,170 electrical engineers in 2024 to 17,290 in 2034, a 14% increase against 7% nationally, with about 1,060 openings a year.
Licensing. Utility, power and MEP roles that seal drawings need a Texas PE license from the Texas Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors.

What this means if you’re hiring

Expect to pay for power experience. Utilities, contractors and data center developers are all chasing the same substation and protection engineers. Plan on the 75th percentile ($161,080) or higher for experienced hires.
Watch the data center audit. If the state’s review slows data center projects, some power engineers may come back on the market. If it clears quickly, competition will get even tighter.
Plan for clearances. Defense electronics roles often need US citizenship and a security clearance.
Recruit from the universities. UT Dallas alone has nearly 700 electrical engineering undergraduates. Internships are the cheapest way to build a pipeline.

Need electrical engineers in Dallas-Fort Worth?

Apollo Technical has recruited engineers since 2010. Our recruiting teams place power, controls, electronics and building electrical engineers on a contract, contract-to-hire and direct hire basis.

Call 214.257.7733 or see our Dallas engineering recruiters page.

Hire electrical engineers

Frequently asked questions

How much do electrical engineers make in Dallas-Fort Worth?

The median electrical engineer salary in the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington metro is $124,390 a year, according to May 2025 BLS data. The middle half earn between $89,410 and $161,080, and the top 10% earn $205,040 or more.

How many electrical engineers are there in Texas?

Texas employed about 15,170 electrical engineers in 2024, and that number is projected to reach 17,290 by 2034, with roughly 1,060 openings a year.

Who hires the most electrical engineers in DFW?

Texas Instruments, Oncor, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Ericsson and Vistra are among the largest employers, along with engineering and power contractors such as Jacobs, Primoris and Burns & McDonnell.

Is Dallas-Fort Worth a good market for electrical engineers?

Yes. DFW pays above the national median, and Oncor’s $47.5 billion capital plan, record grid demand, new chip fabs and the data center build-out are all hiring at once. The state’s 2026 audit of data center grid connections adds some uncertainty, but grid work already underway runs into the 2030s.

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