Senior Semicon Engineer Salary
 

Hi,

I am a senior semicon engineer with 5 yrs experience in Sg-based MNC, NTU grad with hons, EP holder, and my major career achievement has been in inventing more than 140 patented technologies in my field. My basic is 3290/mth, excluding bonus for my patents.

As per my direct sup advice, I've been doing some salary benchmarking recently, got 7 relevant surveys and found myself to be compensated at the bottom-end for all those surveys.

However, their 75th percentiles vary significantly (up to 3K/mth), which has quite confused me to decide which fair salary I should aim (yes, i'm aiming the 75th percentile) when I formally request a pay raise.

Can you share how much senior engineer like me can earn? Thanks a lot.

one of my female friend grad is 2005, till today still working in TECH semi con, 5 years exp, getting about 4.3K basic, they may still clock OT up to 6k+ per mth

The problem with your approach is you may think you are worth 75 percentile, but if your company policy is to pay at 50 percentile, then they will not give you.

I think US company quite siao on cost control so dun think they will anyhow make exceptions. btw, what are the 7 survey from? 3.3k is on the low side, but i dun think is bottom end like you say.

3.3K is on 12th percentile in one survey, which i think is quite on the bottom end.
The 7 surveys include robert walters, payscale.sg, jobscentral, MOM, salary.sg, and others (forgot the name). Kelly doesn't have semicon engineer data.

are you sure you invented 140 patents in your field over past 5 years? If it is really YOU invented them, you won't be paid such little. And I don't think there is anyone in singapore who can invented 140 patents over 5 years time, 28 patents/year, 2+ patents/month. If taking into your leaves, your MCs, your reservice, you are supposed to get 1 patent per week. Are you patent machine? Be honest to yourself. Anyhow, 3300/mth for a senior engineer with 5 years experience is on the lower side. Again, be honest to yourself. Print the list of your patents with your name on it and show it to your manager, he will double or triple your salary if you really have 140+ patents. I sincerely doubt it.

3300/mth is same as me when I have 6 yrs working experience in Semicon. But that was like 7 yrs ago.

Hi, Delly
Seems hard to believe, right? 140 patents in 5 yrs (in fact it's nearly 160 after i recount the list again)...When i joined this company, i also never imagined myself could have any patent...

Here is my story...and up to u to believe or not....i was unemployed for almost 2 years before this company hired me. I'm really grateful to them, that I'm so determined to prove my worth. I learned tirelessly, and read tons of patent documents even during weekends. The bonus i got from those patents almost doubled my salary, that's why i was so motivated to create patents. I NEVER THOUGHT (this is my fault) of comparing my salary with peers, until recently my boss brought up the salary matter ask me directly to conduct salary benchmark.

I don't see any reason to bluff you or the others, in fact i thank you for giving me reassurance that 140 patents in 5 yrs is simply crazy, i will use it as one point in my salary nego.

Btw, my boss is aware of my 140 patents, coz he's managing the patents in my company.

Word of advice, never use these data sources to argue with your HR. They will laugh at you and tell you to get lost diplomatically.

Reason is very simple, headhunters like robert walters & jobscentral like to inflate their data significantly because of self interest, nobody in HR believe that crap other than desperate or inexperienced job seekers.

Those online free salary websites also a bad idea since most of it is based on self-reporting with no fact checking. MOM data is hard to use since theirs is a very generic amalgamation of salary based on general titles, so it doesn't really say much about how much your job is worth.

Most companies do professional benchmarking and job pricing using paid information from specialised consultants that cost quite a bomb, so you can't really get them unless you are willing to pay thousands of dollars for a report.

So if you really want to know how much you are worth, the only thing you can do is ASK for more money from your company & see how much they are willing to give. If not, go out & attend many interviews and quote specific prices to see if there any takers. You should be able to have a rough idea how much you worth.

I like this...very informative, thanks for the advice.

If your boss really ask you to do so, then you could simply bring up the figures and the associated reference and let him see it himself.

wats the bonus u get from patents

Bonus is distributed throughout the next 3 years. In avg, per month is around two thirds of my salary.

Yes, but i need to come up with a number that's not too close to his salary.

What is his salary?

that means abt 5400+ per mth if u add basic+bonus

even withour year-end bonus/AWS..
thats abt 65k per annum.
thats not too low for someone with 5 yrs experience.

Yes, definitely not low...but i consider patent bonus same as overtime bonus.
You have to put the extra effort to get that bonus, not by doing the same daily routine jobs.
As a performing employee, i don't buy the ideas of accepting low basic pay. Even good salesperson will ask for attractive basic pay.

with 160 patents, 5400/mth is peanut. Try US, you can simply double or triple your salary.

US, though they pay better, but the tax is also huge, and is not viable at this moment, coz my wife doesn't buy the idea of relocating there.

patent costs
 

do you realise that if what you said was true, that you company has spent somewhere between 1.6-16Mil on patent costs for the 160 patents you state you have filed.

Somehow I suspect that if a company was prepared to spend S$16Mil just on patenting your technology(let alone the development costs), they would pay you more than 5k/month...

Sorry but exaggeration is not a desirable attribute in a job seeker