Last updated: September 19, 2026
Engineering Staffing San Antonio, TX
We find mechanical, electrical and manufacturing engineers for South Texas truck plants, aircraft hangars, engine labs and utilities.
Open a San Antonio Engineering Search
KORE1 provides engineering staffing in San Antonio for mechanical, electrical, manufacturing and aerospace roles, placing engineers with South Texas truck plants, aircraft maintenance hangars, research labs and utilities, whether the seat is temporary or permanent.
Companies that move work to San Antonio tend to bring one assumption along. Labor costs less here. For most jobs, it does. The Bureau of Labor Statistics put the metro’s average pay across all occupations at $61,140 in May 2025, about 12% below the national figure.
San Antonio pays 12.4% under the U.S. average across all jobs. Its mechanical engineers earn 3% over it.
Engineering is where the discount runs out. Not by a little, either. Electrical and industrial engineers in the metro came within 4% of the national mean for their jobs, and the pool they come from is thin, with about 15,090 people in architecture and engineering work across the eight-county metro, only 80% of the national share. Toyota’s truck plant, Southwest Research Institute, the hangars at Port San Antonio and CPS Energy all hire from that same short list.
Some of those searches aren’t ours to run. Software, cyber and data hires belong to our San Antonio IT staffing team, and office, finance and warehouse roles go through the San Antonio staffing agency desk. The plant, hangar, lab and field seats are what our engineering recruiters work on, and KORE1 has been running that kind of search as an engineering staffing agency for more than 20 years.
Truck Plants Set the Price of a Mechanical Engineer
Mechanical engineers in the San Antonio metro averaged $117,050 in May 2025. The U.S. mean for the same job was $113,610. That’s an odd result in a metro where the typical paycheck runs 12% light. Blame the South Side.
Toyota Motor Manufacturing Texas builds every Tundra and Sequoia on a single line at its 2,000-acre South Side site, more than 197,000 vehicles in 2025, with a group of suppliers working inside the same fence. In July, Toyota announced a $3.6 billion expansion that adds a second assembly line and 2,000 jobs by 2030 and brings the Tacoma back from Mexico. International Motors, the old Navistar, has built Class 6 through 8 trucks here since 2022, and the plant is now its only U.S. assembly plant.
Nobody’s surprised they pay up. A stopped line doesn’t wait for a relocation package, and a second line needs its process engineers long before the first truck comes off it.
- Manufacturing engineers who’ve resequenced a station themselves and can say what it did to cycle time
- Supplier quality is its own trade. The quality engineers we send have run PPAP for a Tier 1 and can read a control plan the way the OEM’s auditor will
- Does the job need someone to design the fixture, or someone to keep it running? Design engineers do the first, controls engineers the second, and a résumé full of PLC keywords won’t tell you which one you’re reading
- 1,670 industrial engineers work in the metro, more than the 1,480 mechanical engineers, which makes them the easier local search
- Automation engineers for robotic weld, paint and material-handling cells, screened on what they commissioned rather than what they watched get commissioned
Most of these searches start local and stay local. An engineer who already knows a plant’s quality system and its supplier base is worth more to it than a stronger résumé from out of state.
Two Technicians for Every Three Electrical Engineers
This one surprised us. The metro counts about 940 electrical and electronics engineering technicians against roughly 1,400 electrical and electronics engineers, so there are two technicians for every three engineers. Across the U.S. it’s closer to one for three.
That’s what a maintenance economy looks like on paper. Port San Antonio, the old Kelly Air Force Base, has more than 80 employers on 1,900 acres, and the biggest is Boeing, whose 5,000-plus workers there make up the company’s largest aircraft modernization complex, including the two jets that will become the next Air Force One. StandardAero overhauls engines next door with more than 1,000 people. Add the Air Force Civil Engineer Center at JBSA-Lackland and CPS Energy’s plants and substations, and most of the work in town is keeping expensive equipment running, which is technicians’ work as much as engineers’.
It changes what we screen for. An electrical engineer who has spent five years beside technicians on a flight line or in a switchyard writes procedures a technician will actually follow, and one who has only sat in design reviews usually doesn’t. We ask every time.
- Electrical engineers averaged $121,130 here in May 2025, only 3.2% under the U.S. mean, so price the search nationally. The electrical engineer salary guide has the bands by level
- Power systems engineers for generation, protection and substations at CPS Energy, which plans to be out of coal by 2028, and at the contractors building for it
- Switchgear, and a lot of it. Industrial Electric Mfg. announced in August a $200 million switchgear and power distribution plant at Brooks with up to 3,000 jobs, and it will need electrical design and test engineers to run it
- About 300 aerospace engineers work in the metro. For structures or propulsion work on a heavy maintenance program, that’s a short list, and we usually widen it
- Data center electrical and mechanical engineers who’ve commissioned generators, switchgear and chilled water plants rather than just maintained them, for campuses like the 300-megawatt one going up in Medina County
Timing picks the engagement model more often than budget does. An outage or an aircraft induction date usually calls for project staffing or a single contract engineer. A permanent seat with a flexible start is a direct hire search, and when the role is still taking shape, contract-to-hire lets both sides find out before anyone commits.
Where the San Antonio Discount Stops
A balanced dial indicator reads zero at the top and counts both ways, plus to the right and minus to the left. Machinists use one to see how far a turning part runs out of true. These eight do the same thing for pay. Each needle is San Antonio’s May 2025 mean wage for one job against the U.S. mean for that job, and the orange hand on every bezel sits at −12.4%, where the metro’s average across all jobs lands.
- 0 is the U.S. mean for the same job
- The needle is San Antonio pay, clockwise is above
- The orange hand marks −12.4%, the all-jobs average
- The purple arc is pay the discount doesn’t cover
All occupations
−12.4%
The metro discount itself
Mechanical engineers
+3.0%
15.4 points over the discount
Electrical engineers
−3.2%
9.2 points over the discount
Industrial engineers
−3.7%
8.7 points over the discount
Electronics engineers
−5.3%
7.1 points over the discount
Aerospace engineers
−7.0%
5.4 points over the discount
Electrical technicians
−11.3%
1.1 points over the discount
Civil engineers
−11.5%
0.9 points over the discount
Look at the last two dials first. Civil engineers and electrical technicians sit almost on the orange hand, so a budget built from the local average works for them. Build a mechanical or electrical engineer’s offer the same way and it lands short before the first interview.
Every reading compares annual mean wages in the May 2025 BLS occupational wage survey, San Antonio-New Braunfels metro against the U.S. “Electrical technicians” is the BLS category for electrical and electronic engineering technologists and technicians, and “points over the discount” is each reading minus the all-jobs figure. Environmental engineers read higher still, at +10.8%, but the metro counts only about 160 of them, so they’re left off the board.
Where the Engineering Work Sits in Greater San Antonio
Federal statisticians count eight counties in the San Antonio-New Braunfels metro, from Atascosa in the south to Kendall in the Hill Country. The plants, hangars and test cells cluster on the South and West sides of Bexar County and out along I-35, while plenty of the senior engineers we talk to live north of Loop 1604, in Stone Oak, Helotes or out toward Boerne. Ask about the commute on the first call. It settles more San Antonio offers than people expect.
- The South Side Toyota’s plant and the suppliers on its site, JCB’s new telehandler and lift plant, scheduled to open this fall, Texas A&M-San Antonio’s engineering technology programs, and the Espada Aqueduct, which has carried water since the 1740s
- Port San Antonio and Kelly Field More than 80 employers on 1,900 acres beside an 11,500-foot runway, among them Boeing, StandardAero, Chromalloy and Knight Aerospace
- The West Side and Culebra Road Southwest Research Institute’s 1,500-acre campus and its 3,200 people, plus Texas Biomedical Research Institute next door
- Medina County Data center country now, with two Microsoft projects filed with the state near Castroville and Rowan’s 300-megawatt campus due in 2027
- Joint Base San Antonio The Air Force Civil Engineer Center at Lackland, plus Randolph and Fort Sam Houston
- The Northwest Side UT San Antonio’s main campus, where enrollment in the Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design rose 13% this fall, and Valero’s headquarters
- Downtown and the East Side CPS Energy’s headquarters, and H-E-B’s Foster Road manufacturing campus, where the grocer plans a $700 million expansion
- The I-35 and I-10 corridors Caterpillar’s engine and generator set work in Seguin and Schertz, Schaeffler’s Seguin plant, and AUMOVIO’s radar plant in New Braunfels, which is adding a $110 million expansion
Bigger searches pull from our engineering desks in Austin, about 80 miles up I-35, and Houston, where process and energy engineers are thicker on the ground. For aerospace and defense manufacturing roles, candidates from our Dallas-Fort Worth engineering network and our Huntsville aerospace engineering desk sometimes make the slate too.
Four Industries Chasing the Same Engineers
Every dial above answers to these four. They recruit from one small pool, and that’s most of the reason engineering pay here doesn’t follow the rest of the local market.
Trucks & Heavy Vehicles
Toyota is adding a second line and 2,000 jobs, and International’s only U.S. assembly plant is here too. Automotive engineers.
Aircraft Maintenance & Defense
Boeing, StandardAero and Chromalloy keep military and commercial aircraft flying from Kelly Field, often under export rules. Reliability engineers.
Power, Water & Data Centers
CPS Energy is retiring coal, SAWS is weighing a $2.6 billion capital plan, and data center projects keep filing west of town. Civil engineers.
Research & Testing
Southwest Research Institute’s 3,200 people test engines, fuels and high-speed propulsion hardware on its West Side campus. Mechanical engineers.
Common Questions About San Antonio Engineering Searches
How much should I budget for an engineer in San Antonio?
$117,050 was the average pay for a San Antonio mechanical engineer in May 2025, while electrical engineers here averaged $121,130, both within a few points of the U.S. mean for the same jobs. So build the offer from national pay, not the city average. Texas has no state income tax, which helps an offer hold up against one from California or Colorado, but it won’t close a 15-point gap. Bands by experience level are in our mechanical engineer salary guide.
What’s a realistic timeline for an engineering hire in San Antonio?
Plan on three to six weeks for most engineering roles, measured from our first conversation about the job to a signed offer. Manufacturing, quality and civil searches tend to close early in that window, since the local bench is deeper. Aerospace and electronics run longer. So does anything that needs an active clearance, because the metro has only a few hundred of those engineers and a new investigation can run for months.
Why do mechanical engineers cost more than San Antonio’s cost of living suggests?
Competition sets their pay, not the cost of living, because the truck plants, hangars and research labs all recruit from about 1,480 local mechanical engineers, which put the May 2025 average 3% above the U.S. mean. A budget set 12% under national, the way most San Antonio jobs pay, misses them by about 15 points. The engineers know it. Most of the ones we call already have another recruiter in their inbox.
Do engineering job postings in Texas have to include a salary range?
No, Texas has no statewide salary-range law, and San Antonio hasn’t passed one for private employers, so a posting for a San Antonio engineering job can go up without a range. Remote roles are different. If someone in Colorado, Washington or another state with a posting law could do the job, that state’s rules may reach your ad, so have employment counsel look before a remote req goes live. We usually suggest a range anyway, because it heads off late surprises at the offer stage.
Can KORE1 fill engineering roles that need a security clearance around JBSA?
Yes, and on those searches we check the clearance before anything else. Some work at Joint Base San Antonio and with defense contractors requires U.S. citizenship and an active clearance, and a new investigation can take months, so a strong engineer without one may not be able to start in time. Aircraft programs add export rules that limit some drawings to U.S. persons. We settle it at intake.
What engineering roles does KORE1 fill in San Antonio?
Mechanical, electrical, manufacturing, quality, industrial, controls, aerospace and civil engineers, from early-career hires to engineering managers, for a project or for good. Plant work leans toward manufacturing and quality engineers. Hangars lean toward structures, avionics and reliability. For an outage or a plant shutdown we can also supply temporary engineering staff for just the length of the job.
How does KORE1 charge for a San Antonio engineering placement?
Hourly for contract engineers, and a single fee tied to starting salary for direct hires. The hourly number bundles pay, payroll taxes, workers’ comp, benefits and our margin into one rate you can budget against. Direct hire fees come with a guarantee. If the person leaves early, we search again. Moving a contractor onto your payroll later works on terms we put in writing up front.
Put Your Budget on the Dial
Send the req and the number you’ve budgeted for it. We’ll show you where that number reads against San Antonio and U.S. pay for the discipline. Then the recruiting starts.
Send Us the San Antonio Req