Don’t you have a bonus to your average salary in the calculation of your 1st pillar for every year you had children or disabled person at home ?
Hi,
I can’t help regarding expenses in the Zürich area and have no experience in your field but regarding salaries, Swiss Engineering makes a yearly study and publishes a report. They sell it but you only need one year and just need it to get a rough idea of what the salary of engineers of your field can look like. It’s not very detailed (you’ll get broad fields but not specialties as a category) but it was enough for my purposes in my field (civil engineering).
https://www.swissengineering.ch/fr/salarbroschure
I’d call/email them and ask directly if their study covers your field before commiting to buying it.
As a very broad estimation and gut feeling, 120,000 CHF sounds like a number that won’t get you laughed at so if you’re hesitating between 100,000.- and 120,000.-, I’d ask for 120,000.- and see what their counter-offer is. The salary can vary greatly depending on the company that hires you so you may land anywhere between 80,000.- and 250,000.- depending on what you target (my gut feeling is that since it seems like you’re not in a hot field like software engineering (feel free to correct me), you may end up on the lower end of the spectrum.
This is a very good idea. I didn’t know about them. Thanks a lot! Is there somewhere a public list of specialties that they cover? Otherwise I’ll just call them. I couldn’t find on their website.
https://www.swissengineering.ch/fr/fachgruppen
For you, I’d say either “FG Elektronik und Informatik” (German) or GP Electronique et Informatique (French). They don’t have an English version. For the Zürich area, you’ll probably have better luck with the German one. The phone and email of the contact person (usually the president) are available on their dedicated page.
The other association you might want to try is the SIA (Schweizericher ingenieur- und architektenverein): https://www.sia.ch/en/the-sia/
They also have a salary survey but they’re more oriented toward the construction fields.
Both of them are always after money, so they’ll probably be happy to answer your questions if it means you’re going to buy something from them and/or would join them if you end up working in Switzerland.
There are probably associations specifically dedicated to your field but I don’t know them.
Have fun!
Edit: Typo.
I asked a friend of mine (who’s owning a electrical/mechanical engineering company developing some step drivers) today what salary you could expect and he said 100k CHF are realistic in the Zug area and probably more in ZRH. So my statement about up to 120k CHF in ZRH stands.
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